21.3 | Section 3 Is Success Ultimately a Blessing or a Curse?
Section 3 | Is Success Ultimately a Blessing or a Curse?
Most readers of success literature believe that success is the thing they seek, and the failure to obtain it is pain.
But few people realize:
The pain after obtaining it is often deeper, more hidden, and more lethal.
Arthur Schopenhauer once said something very classic:
"Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom (or: the pain of not getting, and the pain of having gotten)."
The first kind of pain is universal, so everyone knows it;
The second kind of pain is understood only by the few who have truly succeeded, so it is more secretive and also more dangerous.
1. Story: The "Curse" After Jobs’ First Success
Steve Jobs achieved massive success by age 25; it was a kind of "easy success."
But this success did not make him better; instead, it allowed his Ego to inflate to the extreme: * He became irritable and dictatorial;
- He created internal conflicts within the company;
- He was overconfident and refused to listen to any advice.
This is not an outlier.
After investing in many entrepreneurs, I have also summarized a consensus:
Entrepreneurship is a form of spiritual discipline. Success makes a person "unlikable";
Failure makes a person better.
I often say:
"It is very hard to get along with people who have had continuous success, because their Ego only gets larger and larger. Whereas those who have failed are often humbler and more worth investing in."
Jack Ma also said:
The hardest thing in the world is to persuade people who have already succeeded. Because they all believe they are omniscient.
Why is this?
Because—
Success itself can be either a blessing or a curse. The key is not the result, but to whom you attribute the glory.
2. Psychological Analysis: Why Does Success Make People Worse?
There are three mechanisms in psychology that can completely explain this:
(1) The Distortion of the Self-Evaluation System After Success This is the "Success Illusion Effect." When a person attributes success to themselves, they develop three delusions:
- Feeling their judgment is always correct;
- Feeling they can control all outcomes;
- Ignoring luck, ignoring others, and ignoring the environment.
These three delusions lead to a decline in cognitive ability—meaning you see things with too much subjectivity. The more successful you are, the more your erroneous self-judgment leads to massive deviations, and you won’t even realize it.
The more successful, the more you are blind to the truth.
(2) Success Strengthens Desire, Creating a Deeper Sense of Scarcity Psychology calls this the "Hedonic Treadmill." * The more you get → The higher the expectation → The higher the expectation → The less the satisfaction.
- Less satisfaction → Deeper scarcity.
- Getting brings comparison, and comparison is always upward. Thus, the more successful, the more one feels scarcity and anxiety.
I have a famous entrepreneur friend who said: A person feels the poorest when they earn their first million, because they have tasted the flavor of wealth, but looking up, everyone has more money than them.
So you will see:
The more successful the person, the more painful they are inside.
(3) Success Leads to the Breaking of Relationships When the Ego inflates, it produces the psychological phenomenon of "Social Drift": * Drifting further and further away from old friends;
- Becoming disconnected from partners and family;
- Feeling more lonely after entering new social circles.Because the person begins only to dialogue with the Self, rather than dialoguing with the world.
3. Theological Perspective: The Devil Most Often Uses Success, Not Fear
The public thinks the Devil is a scary image or a terrifying temptation. Actually, it is quite the opposite:
The Devil is never about scaring people; it’s about enticing them. The way the Devil influences you is through "Success," not "Failure." It is by satisfying you, using satisfaction to feed your Ego. When the Ego is comfortable, it leads the True Self to completely lose its character.
Why?
Because success strengthens the Ego; the Ego strengthens the cut-off of submission. After submission is cut off, the person can no longer hear the voice of God. Thus, the person relies on themselves and becomes a "runaway child," walking toward misjudgment, arrogance, and self-destruction.
This is more dangerous than failure.
Failure wakes people up;
Success puts people to sleep.
So, if you attribute success to yourself:
Your Ego will inflate rapidly, and then your judgment will be distorted. Furthermore, your self-positioning changes, and the conflicts between you and your original familiar world, relationships, and self will deepen. You will re-enter the state the Devil loves most: continuing to be self-centered. In the end, this success will turn into a curse.
But if you attribute success to God:
You will remain humble, and humility is "seeking truth from facts" (Shi Shi Qiu Shi). Thus, your Ego will be restricted. You suppress the Ego and continue to maintain a relationship of submission with God. Therefore, your Self is harmonious, and the flow of the next round of Grace will continue.
So success itself is neither good nor bad;
The meaning of success depends on where it points. If success leads you toward yourself, it is a curse.
If success leads you toward God, it is a blessing.
