The Great Thing About The Downside Of Being At The Top
Our yearning for celebration of success is, sometimes, so blinding that its downside is almost inconsequential to us.
Throughout our lives, we’ve learnt that life stands meaningless without a purpose. That life lived without a purpose is life wasted.
This notion of purpose is coherent with our definition of success, which more often than not is tied to a specific destination with a definite outcome and we tend to spend our lives either in pursuit of the culmination of the favourable outcome or the fear of an unfavourable one.
Everything is fine until, subconsciously, we attach the concept of the happiness as a state achievable only upon the successful achievement of a favourable outcome.
Overtime, as the terrain becomes rugged and life presents us with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, our vision of the future becomes foggy and the whole thing starts to look like an ordeal and we find ourselves caught in the vicious cycle of de-motivation, pessimism, and complacency.
If you’ve ever been through this, you should know you are not alone. I have spent several years of my life yearning for this state of happiness.
It is only now that I have come to understand that happiness does not have to be as elusive as it seems. Happiness can, very well, be in our conscious control. It is simply a matter of shift in perspective. However, it does not come easy and it is not permanent. It needs consistent and conscious effort.
Happiness, as a state, is ‘often’ only as far as a change in perspective. Though, easier said than done, it is absolutely possible.
The incident that changed everything
On the 31st of March 2020, three days ago, I found myself in a weird state of emotions. An emotional state that is incredibly difficult for me to put into words with the vocabulary I have at present.
I had just secured the 1st rank from among 866 other participants from across the country in an assignment of an online digital marketing internship program.
I was not sure if such a thing was even remotely possible but as an afterthought, I did try to envision its possibility.
That it happened exactly as I anticipated came as the biggest shock.
What came next was something I was not prepared for.
I was unable to sleep for the next 36 hours.
It was an amalgamation of the feelings of Joy, Fear, Pride, Shock, being Appreciated, Responsibility, Anticipation, Enthusiasm, Motivation, Liberation.
Years of entrapped fear, anguish, inferior complexity and self-pity, all of it, went away in one moment.
It was surreal and exhilarating.
A life beyond the binary
You might wonder how crazy it is of someone to win something and still not know how to enjoy and celebrate the success.
I understand that it appears unreasonable at the first glance but if only you can adopt more-than-just-binary view of life, would you be able to step into these shoes and maybe, understand why was it the way it was for me at that moment.
Life to most of us, is often a binary choice between the Black and the White, the Right or the Wrong, the Best or the Worst, the Prey and the Victim.
But we are not Neanderthals!
We are Homo Sapiens in the 21st century. We live in an age where opinion polls have Yes, No and Can’t Say. We have multiple perspectives, narratives and objectives. That’s life beyond the binary.
Seemingly, there is ‘often’ a middle-ground or in-between.
Between:
a. the Black and the White is the Grey
b. the Right and the Wrong is the Untold-Truth
c. the Best and the Worst is Not Bad
d. the Prey and the Victim is the Saviour
But only if we take a moment to ponder, will we open ourselves to new perspectives and it is only then that we begin to move away from the binary view of life.
New perspectives open us to new possibilities and give us a deeper insight into ourselves.
I understand that thinking can sometimes be like walking on a slippery slope.
Thinking ‘too much’ will lead a person to finding himself anchored to the depths of one perspective and even if he reboots the whole process to try the depths of another, it does not take long for him to become indecisive.
Having said that, it is equally true that a binary view of life makes a person highly opinionated and prone to pitfalls of judgement.
Reaching the summit
Joy
The moment I found my name at the top of the list, it was sheer joy. It knew no bounds. It didn’t take very long for me to realize that my body was shaking violently with excitement and my lips were shouting and muttering, in an alternating rhythm, Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!
It didn’t exactly feel like reaching the summit of Mt. Everest, but it felt nothing less, either.
Being Appreciated
It wasn’t very long before the comments and messages started pouring in from all quarters. On Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Everywhere!
For all the time I have spent on this planet, I have never felt appreciated to the extent that I just did. Suddenly, years of hard work made sense. All of it had a meaning.
It felt amazing to be appreciated for the years of reading and writing that went in to be able to create this piece of work in a few hours. Like an iceberg, where the part visible is a mere 10%, the rest is underneath invisible but there.
I was ecstatic, jumping around.
Liberation
All my life I had only known the best ways to critique myself. At every stage of life, when I found myself ridiculed, insulted, abused or beaten up, all I found myself doing was critique my own self, skills and worth. I could not control the external forces, I was incapable. I could not fend off those who tried to harm or ridicule me.
But I could very well, work on myself and that’s what I did, everytime. I would spend hours and hours reading self-help books, complete skill mastery courses, start reading blogs, watch YouTube videos of strength coaches and army veterans (this was way back, in 2008) and often approach some of them via email with questions on how to be mentally and physically tough.
One of them was Wayne Fisher, a US army veteran whom I approached with a few questions on fitness, strength and bulking up, who ended being one of the best friends I have found. I would confide in him with all the fights I had and rejections I faced.
However, this study in solitude did not come without a cost. While, I started enjoying my learning time alone, it made me a recluse. Every now and then, something would happen that would give me stronger and stronger reasons to go back to my cave. A group of bullies would beat me up or a group of friends would ridicule me or some of my cousins would try to lower my self worth. Overtime, I started keeping myself, increasingly, aloof from everybody.
Over several years, I kept working on polishing my skills and improving my personality from multiple angles with hopes of a possible retribution in future. As time went by, the desire to compete and avenge started to take its roots deeper and deeper within me; while the mindset and habit to search for answers and learn more started to become a way of life.
Eventually, I became this person with an innate desire to achieve big things suppressed by the fear of possible ridicule and rejection only to seek solace in his mindset of learning and improving daily.
At what cost? No Action, Only Dreams!
I feared competition bogged down by the anticipation of failure and the subsequent judgement by the public at large.
But the day of the result was different. I could feel things change. I was no longer tied down by the chains of fear. I started feeling confident of who I had become, of how I think, of how I behave, of where I am heading. Everything started to feel perfect.
I felt liberated!
Motivation
The feeling of liberation did not come alone. What came along was the motivation to amplify the efforts I had already been putting. The feeling of everything going on perfectly gave way to the motivation of adding fuel to the fire of desire within.
I wanted to prepare for the next race right there and then. I had just won this race but I was keen to take part in another.
I no longer feared competition, rather I looked forward to it. The motivation to compete and succeed far outweighed the fear of failure and judgement.
The downsides, I wasn’t prepared for
The barrage of conflicting emotions that started to flow past the moment of sheer excitement and joy was simply too much for me to handle. Truly, I was not prepared, at all.
Shock
Suddenly, I was at the centre of all attraction.
I started to get a stream of congratulatory messages. The friend requests count on Facebook started to blow up as if it was bot-driven. Initially, I ignored them all of them but very soon I realized that many were real accounts.
What seemed to be shocking at first was now amusing to me. Having secured the top rank meant everybody wanted to be in my loop and learn from me. Everybody wanted to be in touch and follow me and my work going ahead into the further projects.
But I was not prepared for this. I did not anticipate such response.
In one moment, I became nobody to somebody. That was the shock.
Anticipation
By now things had started to get very messy in my head.
This quote had started playing loud in my head by now.
The wolf up the hill isn’t as hungry as the wolf climbing the hill
I found myself visualizing and anticipating the next race, then the next race and then the next. I started to anticipate tougher competition from everybody else now.
Before I realized, I was already visualizing various possible outcomes in the upcoming rounds. I started to refer back to the topics for the upcoming assignments and wonder whether to, what to and how to prepare for each one of them.
It took me sometime before I got overwhelmed and decided to take a break from all of this.
Fear
The visualization and anticipation of multiple outcomes gave room to the fear of losing the next several rounds and the possibility of being judged by everyone at large.
Not that it bothers me, when someone is critical of my work, it was more about my worries of being a ‘one time wonder’ in my own eyes.
Probably, this fear was a form of self-critic rooted deep within that was starting to surface and go away. I do not know!
I was now worried about a drop in my performance, about the possibility of me becoming complacent. I wanted to mitigate this risk by getting back to work right away.
Pride
I was proud of what I achieved after hours of serious efforts (not to mention the years that went in) to research, understand and describe the topic to the best of my ability. It was something I could call my own. I deserved it and I achieved it. Nobody could take it away from me.
Usually, one starts to become too haughty or arrogant when such a moment of achievement shows up in life. This is more prevalent in cases where the person achieves something without putting in a lot of hard work or when he/she receives something significant but undeserved, as an endowment.
Even though I was sure it would never happen to me, I could not assume my absolute immunity to it. At last, I was still a human, equally prone to the irrational behavior and emotional misjudgement.
I was worried what if I end up doing what I always tried not to.
Responsibility
“You’ve raised the bar for all of us.”
“God level work.”
“You’ve set the bar of performance very high for all of us now.”
When these came my way, a different stream of thoughts started to fill up my headspace. From joy, excitement, anticipation and fear, it came down to this feeling of a controlled self. I started to feel more responsible.
Now being at the helm felt more like a responsibility to lift others than to celebrate my own success. There were people who said they have started to look up to me for their writing. They were seeking advice and tips to improve their writing. They felt like they could learn a lot from me.
This humbled me. I swear, I had never imagined that being at the top can be so humbling. The only thing I could imagine at that time was claps from everybody. It did not occur to me that after achievement of a goal, it will no longer be about my journey only.
Success was inconsequential to me and I was so wrong.
How I made sense of everything
After being awake for 36 hours straight and hosting these stream of thoughts and emotions, I was finally able to draw a picture of what just happened and how to move ahead with it.
I concluded that:
Success is relative.
Not everybody is playing the same game and all of those who are, are most likely not playing from the same level. In such a case, being arrogant is being foolishly ignorant. Instead, Success can be humbling. It can keep one grounded and real.
Success is not guaranteed and it takes time.
So the best way to succeed is with persistent and consistent hard work with the patience of a Nile Crocodile.
Success brings power and recognition.
Power can be used to create a symbiotic growth environment or misused to serve self interests at the cost of others well-being and growth. It is only a matter of perspective and choice.
Competition is always good when it is healthy.
The stronger the participants in a competition, the higher the level of game played and harder each of them have to work. The harder each of them work, the better each of them get to be. In the end, everyone gains regardless of the final winner.
and finally, Nothing lasts forever. So keep pushing farther, harder and smarter.
In the end, this leaves us with a question:
“Did I just think too much?”
or
“Were you simply not thinking enough?”
or
“Is the question binary?”
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