Why all this success propaganda is wrong
Photo by Hombre on Unsplash

You can read so many articles on Medium about how to succeed that you would be left with no time to do any damn thing. But the premise which forms the basis for these articles is a failure from the start to the end. The idea that you have to fight in order to succeed is being spread by people who think they have to fight or love to fight. As great thinker Alan Watts points out

“Success is the biggest failure."  — Alan Watts.

There is no one to fight with.

This becomes clear when you really think about what you want for other people. If you think long enough about this, you will realize that is that what you want for yourself is what you want for others.

This realization comes from deep within ourselves, from the deepest layer of our being. We are hardwired in such a way that the goodness within us always ahead, or overcomes, the evil side. We all know we have two sides, the good and the irreducible evil inclination. Furthermore, we also know that the good eventually triumphs. This is clear because in order for existence to continue forever, the good side of it is more powerful that the evil side.

So if you really think it through, you will eventually realize that there is no one left to fight with. We all have or come from the same essence.This realization is the real success. It is you overcoming your present context of thinking. As the famous Sufi mystic once wrote

“The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself." — Rumi

On another level, I find success as the being able to do something which you think you cannot.

Whenever I try to produce something, success for me is the exceeding of my own expectation about the quality of what I create. But this exactly the same kind of overcoming oneself I was talking about earlier. You basically overcome your fear of self disappointment by allowing yourself to engage in a new kind of creative activity. One has a fear of damaging the image of oneself if one fails to meet his expectation.