Never ever let success go to your head

There’s an alarming trend taking place: People who have had some degree of good fortune and success tend to lose their humility and become at least slightly arrogant. This is very unfortunate for many reasons. First, and most obviously, no one really wants to be around someone who is arrogant. It’s boring, and it’s annoying! Arrogance implies a lack of gratitude. The assumption is, “I did this all by myself; it’s all about me.” Factors such as Lord’s blessings, good fortune, and so on are forgotten or disregarded.

In addition, when you allow success to go to your head, your stress levels skyrocket and your quality of life gradually disappears. People will stop liking you, and eventually, you’ll stop liking yourself.

Friendships slip away; obsessive busyness and a lack of time take over. Someone who was happy and relatively easy to please is now impossible to satisfy.

I’ve read articles about celebrities, athletes, and business people who have done really well – their talent, timing, hard work, luck, and all the rest of it kicked in at just the right time. Yet, rather than being grateful and keeping a sense of perspective, they think that they are somehow better or more important than others simply because they’re good at something and have enjoyed some success.

Never ever let success go to your head!

Srila Prabhupada Nectar

Avoid the trap of reaction spirals

It’s a rare person who can avoid the trap of reaction spirals. This is the dangerous tendency to overreact to something – and then compound the problem by over analyzing it. Here is a typical example: someone criticizes some aspect of your work. You overreact to the criticism and become defensive. Then you spend the next half hour analyzing the critical comments, convincing yourself they are incorrect. A whirlwind of thoughts passes through your mind. You focus on the criticism. The more you do, the worse you feel, and the more tired you become.

The truth is, in a negative state of mind, we expend unnecessary energy, make very poor decisions, and lose our creativity and sense of joy. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could nip these reaction spirals in the bud?

You can! The trick is to see them coming and to commit, in advance, to “short circuiting” them. With every negative reaction comes a negative feeling – a feeling of irritation, annoyance, or impatience. We often use these feelings to justify further negativity. For example, we say to ourselves something like, “I have a right to be angry.” Now that we’re focused on our anger, we think about other instances that make us angry, and so on. This fuels our negative feelings and creates a negative spiral.

If, instead of compounding our negative feelings, we used them as a signal to alert us to potential trouble, we would be in a much better position to stop the cycle before it got out of hand.

Srila Prabhupada Nectar

Srila Prabhupada Nectar

Why is accepting criticism so difficult?

Here are some of the top reasons:

Other people do not know how to criticize properly.  Most people criticize in such a way that makes us very emotional.

However, we know that we cannot control how other people express themselves, but we can control how we internally respond to their criticism. We often take it too personally.  We must remember that it is our actions or performance that is really being criticized and not us. We fail to put criticism in perspective.  If you have created a work of art that thousands of people admire, and a few express dislike, realize that you cannot please all of the people all of the time.  It is true that for every one person who criticizes, there are probably ten more that feel the same way, but even with these numbers your work or performance is being enjoyed by the majority.

We fear failure.  Benjamin Franklin did not always have good inventions, and Schwarzenegger certainly does not always make great movies.  Our fear of failure, rather than acceptance of it, causes us to often deny the truth or at least be blinded by our own ego.  When criticism is just, we must accept it graciously, learn from it, and move on. Critics often expect harsh reactions to their criticism, probably because that is the way most people respond.  Not successful people.  Shock your critics by thanking them for their feedback and if you choose to accept the criticism, share with them what way you plan on using their criticism. 

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