What do you think of successful people?

​I remember the fist time that I read someone say that our biggest fear is fear of success. I thought it was the biggest pile of nonsense I ever read. How could somebody be afraid of success? If you are successful, you can have anything you want. Life is easier, and you are respected and admired by other people. Surely, nobody would be afraid of that. Fear of success just didn’t make sense to me. However, I was very fond of several authors who mentioned this so, over the past few years, I have reflected on the idea of being afraid of success.

One of the questions I used ​during my reflection is:

​‘What do you think of successful people?’

​The idea being that if you considered what you think about successful people, it would give you a reflection of what you really think about success. If you have a negative view of most successful people, you are constantly telling yourself that success is bad. And, if you think that success is bad, how are you going to stay motivated to be successful in your own life?

I must be honest and admit that my own view of successful people has not always been great. It is something which I have tried to work on in recent times and as I have made progress, I have found that as my attitude towards successful people has improved, my own personal success had improved too. I firmly believe that my own resistance to success is breaking down as I am improving the way that I view successful people.

​The following are just some examples of how I generalised about large groups of successful people and some simple things I have done to change my perspective:

​I have never been fond of politicians and in fairness, in Ireland, there is a strong history of corruption amongst our politicians. Not only do I not vote; I am not even on the electoral register. I was taken off it when I left for New Zealand in 2005 and despite being back in the country since 2011, I have made no effort to register for a vote.

I have always allowed the few high-profile cases of Irish political corruption to taint my views of all other politicians which is entirely unreasonable. In fact, we have had some very good politicians in this country who have really cared about the people.

I have now started to look for things that I can respect and admire, for example:

​I would never vote for our current Taoiseach or his party, but I am better able to find reasons to respect them. I am also trying hard to avoid personalising my criticism as a bad policy/decision doesn’t make a bad person.

​The world of celebrity has become more and more important in modern society, or at least it appears that way. What I always found irritating is the people who are just famous for being a celebrity i.e. famous for being famous. They do not appear to have any discernible talent other than the ability to attract attention.

I grew up in an era when most musicians/bands wrote their own songs and played their own instruments; something which has become less common. Actors were given roles on merit; not on notoriety. Kids used to want to be rock stars, sports stars, actors etc.  Now they just want to be famous and they don’t care what for. Asking me to watch ‘Reality TV’ would be like asking Dracula to sunbathe.

To deal with my begrudging attitude towards those celebrities whom I believed to be devoid of talent, I tried many different things, including:

​I only ever see these celebrities when they appear as guests on shows I enjoy such as chat shows, or panel shows. Because I am seeing them out of their usual context, I get to see them for who they really are and, I usually like them and admire their achievements. It seems that it is just the genre of tv show, music etc. that I didn’t like, and I was using that to form an opinion of the people involved in those genres.

​When I was younger, I always associated successful business people with privilege. I believed that they were all born into money, had been privately educated and had all the connections necessary for success. Not that there is anything wrong with those things, but they are very different from my upbringing and so formed a good excuse for why I couldn’t be successful.

In addition, I also believed that business people were out to crush and exploit the working man. They cared only for money and they used people up and spat them out when they were done with them. This impression of business people didn’t exactly encourage me to respect them.

There certainly are some business people who walk all over others to get what they want. But there are just as many great business people who are in business to serve the needs of their customers. These people try to take great care of their employees and seek to help them develop them in to the best people that they can be. Many of these companies actively engage in Corporate Social Responsibility and work to eliminate social problems such as:

​Unfortunately, many of these companies never get the publicity and recognition that they deserve because unfortunately good news doesn’t sell as well as bad news. But if you do your research, you can find stories of great companies, doing great work within their communities. So much so, that this cynic has begun to see businesses as real vehicles for change.

​Often, we hold ourselves back from being successful due to our beliefs about successful people. If you are constantly attacking or disapproving of successful people for being successful, then you are constantly telling yourself that success is wrong. What you associate with success and how you view successful people really does influence your desire to be successful, there are many ways to be successful in this world and you just need to find the one that works for you. There are many great role models out there and even amongst people whom you don’t always agree with; there are still traits and behaviours you can respect and learn from. By taking the time to identify the elements of success you like, you can start to shape a vision for the life you really want, and you can start pursuing that life.