This domain of thinking is perhaps the biggest area of discrepancy between the successful and the average.
When the average person looks around at the successful people in the world, the first feeling they typically get is one of disgust or jealousy. They will often think “why can’t I have what they have?” or “it’s unfair that there are billionaires when so many people like me are barely scraping together rent.” Nearly everyone at some point has thought one of these two things. The average person may eventually come to hate people who are affluent or successful, which then limits their own ability to grow. On a subconscious level, they are not willing to become that which they hate.
Hate, envy, and disgust are definitely not the dominating emotions of those who achieve massive success in life, and it certainly serves them well. When success-minded people, including those who are still in progress toward their dreams, see the success of others they aren’t thinking about gender/race advantage or why they can’t get ahead. They instead are thinking “what can I learn from this person that I can use in my own journey?” The mindset is very similar to the child who looks up at their parent with pride and says “when I grow up, I want to be just like you!” Such people aren’t looking to condemn the success of others, they are looking for hints. They know that the successful breathe the same air as themselves, and that the successful aren’t necessarily smarter or more gifted either.
The success-minded person will then seek out ways of getting around people who can help them and those that they look up to. They not only speculate about learning from the success of others, they take action to learn from them!
The average person also may believe that the success of others makes it harder to be successful themselves. It’s as if they believe the universe gives out only so many “success tickets” each century. Competition makes it harder to succeed at times, yes, but it can also bring out your best as you ascend to levels of complete domination in your sector. For the most part, you aren’t even going to be competing with many of the major players out there. But when you do, rest assured that because you are a unique human being you bring something novel to the table. The success-minded all know this. They don’t believe the best possible product is out there on the market until they themselves provide it in a way only they can. There is an abundance of money and success out there that you can have. However in order to get it, you need to transcend the mundane and average mindset.
Making the Shift
In order to go from loathing the success of others to looking to them for ideas and inspiration, you need to change your thinking a little bit each day. Sure, you can always try to “will” yourself to be thankful for all these people and try reconditioning your mind to accept that the successful aren’t bad people, but there is a far easier way.
Take action! Hop on Youtube and start looking for people you “vibe with” who have achieved a lot of success doing what you are attempting yourself. See if they have any “how to”-type videos online and watch a million of them. The old saying “familiarity breeds contempt” has been proven false by psychological research years ago. In fact quite the opposite is true. The more time you spend around someone the more you come to appreciate them. By watching “how-to” videos or asking advice from people who have achieved their goals you will learn that they are not all evil (some are, don’t get me wrong), and they want you to succeed as well. You will start to see the actual human being behind all the fame and glory after a while. More importantly, you will start to relate with them. There will come an “aha!” moment where you see that if they can do it so can you. It’s really not enough to be told that fact, you have to feel it in your bones for yourself. The best way to make that happen is by getting around the people you admire in any way you can for a sufficient amount of time. Once you’ve had this experience, there is no going back to hating the success of others. It’s just not possible.
Tyler Bennett is a writer, entrepreneur, and graduate student in mathematics who has a passion for helping students get the most out of their education and their lives as a whole. He has authored several books including The Art of Habit Building and The College Handbook They Never Gave You under the pen name Dan Stevens, and is the primary writer for the website TheCollegeSuccessGuide.net . Tyler is married and has four cats.