Grateful and optimistic

I have written many posts about failure, and very little about success. Usually, we think that success is the end to our trouble, but unless we are careful the success can be very dangerous. For today’s most you can read more here, here, here, here, and here.

Yin Yang

The end of December is the darkest time of the year. The night is the longest and the day is the shortest. Yet this is a period of a great optimism. We feel that the winter will end and days will get longer. We look back at the year and remember all the good things. We celebrate the achievements and we feel optimistic. At least this is what we are taught to do. We are taught that the light starts in the heart of darkness and darkness starts in the heart of the light. This is one of the interpretations of the ancient Yin Yang symbol. In our life, we quite often associate success with light. Taking the analogy one step further, what is so dangerous in success?

The sin of pride

The ancient wisdom recognized pride as one of the mortal sins. Once we are successful, we can get overly confident, trust too much in our own powers, become reckless and make terrible mistakes. This happened to me a lot when I was younger, happens much less now. When we recognize this fact and start to fight it, we can again be overconfident in our success and blind to our mistakes. Sometimes it helps to listen to someone who can mirror the situation for us. The best thing: not to get overconfident at all.

There are several simple tricks that allow us to handle success.

• Experience. Each time we feel strong and confident, remember the last time we felt this way and failed completely.
• Credit. Nobody can succeed all by himself. Sharing credit helps in many ways.
• Admitting luck. When we fail we blame luck, when we win we praise vision and hard work. Good decisions may lead to failure and bad decisions can lead to success. We can change the chances, but luck will still matter.
• Having a role model. When we have a role model or alternatively a peer of equal capability, we understand that there is a lot of place for improvement. Not having someone to compete with may be a problem.
• Set a bigger goal. Even if we succeed in smaller goals, having a bigger goal does not allow us to relax and smug.
• Perspective. Occasionally it is good enough to review the situation from some distance. It is better not to do any serious actions when we are emotional from success: the next day when euphoria wears off we will probably make fewer mistakes.

Rebirth

Occasionally we can use a success as a chance for a change, a rebirth for a slightly different and more complex role. Just as graduation from high school prepares us for college, and graduation from college prepares us for our first job. Every success can be used as a stepping stone to a more interesting challenge. Usually, we use failure as a trigger to learn new things and change, and we prefer to keep things as-is when we succeed. This makes a lot of sense for any animal to condition successful behaviors. As a human being, we need some extra effort to override this natural programming and go beyond success toward mastery. If we do not learn from success, we will be summoning failure to progress and change. And this is a dangerous path.

Find inspirations everywhere

Having degrees and diplomas we tend to overlook humble things. One of the paradoxes of mastery: small simple things stop being small and simple as we look deeper. There are unexpected inspirations everywhere, it takes a special sort of prepared mind to notice them.

Gratitude

When we communicate success, nothing beats gratitude. Just as each Oscar winner thanks to all the people who paved his way to success, we should thank these people in our life. We do not need a spectacular success. Each day is full of many small successes. It is a common practice to have a diary of gratitude, where people write their gratitudes for all the small successes they had. They thank those that help them succeed: friends, family, mentors, authors, luck, and unlikely inspirations.

Communicating success

Sometimes we need to communicate a group success. It is harder to be humble as a group leader. I like this short guide on owning success:

• Keep the emphasis on the hard work.
• Don’t belittle others, no matter what happened.
• Give credit where it’s due.
• Stick to the facts. Generalizations do not help.
• Express gratitude.
• Don’t add a qualifier. Own the success, do not belittle it .
• Avoid the humble-brag. Humble-bragging people do not sound sincere.

Enjoy

With all the caution, people often forget to enjoy success. This most natural and simple motivation can slip away if we do not put attention. Do not run away from success or let it slip. Enjoy it. Remember the situation. Be there. Feel it and savor it, since it will not last for long.

Having one success we have all the reasons to expect other success to come. This makes us optimistic, and optimistic (but not over-optimistic) people succeed more often and enjoy life more.