Cult of Success
What is the cult of success and how to achieve it?
What are YOU willing to do for SUCCESS?
There is never too much money! But is it?
Life satisfaction does increase with an annual salary that you productively earn, but at first… up to $100,000, and then satisfaction starts to decline.
That’s the point where you understand that money doesn’t bring happiness.
But why does money not bring happiness, but decrease it?
1 Idea is that money helps with basic needs – food, home, clothes, maybe traveling and later money put you in a place of rich ones and we stop liking what liked before. People start to want more premium things. Massage always when needed, clothes and so on. if previously spas and massage were a luxury, now it became a need. Do you want to feel better, sleep better and be fit and ready?
Do you want to know how much money you’ll need for it to be enough? Depending on a region there are different points.
– Worlds Average 95 000$
– West Europe / Scandinavia 100 000$
– Eastern EU / Balkans 45 000 $
– Australia / New Zealand 125 000$ (max)
– South West Asia 70 000$
– West Asia 110 000$
– Latin America / Caribbean 35 000$ (Min)
– North America 105 000$
– North / West Africa 115 000$
– Africa below Sahara desert 40 000$
https://sci-hub.se/10.1038/s41562-017-0277-0
So there is no need to get more than 2800$ a month – approx as it’ll make you less happy. As passing this point – you are putting yourself as the poorest of the richest. So DJ Khaled was right about – suffering from success.
Why do we always compare ourselves to another? Or compare other things? What productivity do we and others have and how efficient are we and they? Where do successful stories arise and what makes us chase them?
Why do we work more than people before us? Try to be more productive and make more in a day. Why do Japanese sleep everywhere in Japan? What Elon Musk doesn’t reveal? Why does the rule of 10 000 h not work? What are people ready to do to gain success? Why motivation can harm you? You’ll find answers later in the blog.
If you’ll ask 1st graders – who can dance? They’ll say – I can, I can!
And sing? – Me, me! And draw? – Everyone will.
But if you’ll ask the same questions to 11 graders – they’ll mostly be silent, maybe except for some people. Why so?
What happens to children during school? It’s highly doubtful that they lose their talent, motivation, and abilities. It’s a school – so they must gain and learn. The thing is that children between 17-18 years of age start understanding that they are part of society. And start to be afraid of other people’s (negative) evaluation – better not to do anything – not to arise cringy, stupid or so the whole class started laughing at you.
Basically from school, your evaluation starts. At the start, you earn stars, then marks for what you do. To get A (5) is better than D, E (2,1). It’s better to be a High Grader than 1st grader. During Physical Activity lessons, you stand in a line of who’s higher and who’s lower. Which gives you more comparison opportunities. That’s how school affects you to start evaluating yourself.
From the ideal idea, there should be an evaluation of your knowledge, efficiency, physical capabilities, and talents, but in fact, we get – an evaluation of the personality of a small child. When teachers told me that I didn’t know or understand the subject – I was evaluating it like this – Hey! You don’t only know the subject, but also you are not going to make it anywhere! So, teachers from their authority point could put less value on a little child – and for their asking of – can you please go out and enter the classroom normally? I thought – but can I even do that? Am I capable of that?… Can I normally enter the room?
OR I enter like that:
Is it everywhere like that?
It’s not like that everywhere:
In Finland, marks are put only for big projects. And privately in e-dictionary and other children don’t see them as the aim is not to show everyone child’s marks, but to motivate and show the person their talents, good qualities, and others (it’s achieved with acting, choosing subjects and without marks). But it’s mostly only 1% of all the schools…
And more than that we start to think that everything has its own value, an objective one. We also rate and choose cafes for star ratings, hotels, films, and series. As well as we get credit scores from the bank. How does it trust us and trust that we won’t go bankrupt? But ratings have another side – when these don’t talk about the quality of the product, but talk about effort and person overall – just like in the antiutopian cinematography. Where with a low rating you can’t buy a flight ticket, can’t book a car or no one wants to give you a ride, not to get their rating in trouble. It’s already a reality – taxi writes – if the rating of a passenger is below 4,6 I don’t take the order. While taxi drivers with such ratings are being blocked in the company.
One more trouble of ratings – is – faking and lying. There are people and systems that fake evaluate. If a company is based on steps per movement – people will create a fake stepping system. If the company is based on watching videos or gaining social data – there will be mobile farms.
A lot of hotels, cafes, and restaurants after going out ask for a rating evaluation. And when I choose where to go – I come to the place and don’t see what ratings of quality suggested. As well as – everyone around wants to see – A/S grades (10s, 5s), those who excel. Which leads to rating inflation. Where rating becomes useless. We start choosing between 5 till 4.5 and 3.9 become sketchy for us.
In Harvard from 1910 Average marks increased from 2.4 to 3.8 in 2022! Maybe it’s because students became cleverer?… No! Just everyone started chasing Marks. Not knowledge or abilities.
But at least we try to provide you with quality texts, blogs, stories, and content concerning productivity. Hope that you enjoy it.
You learn a lot, but reality hits...
You can learn a lot of things, but when it’ll come to the real situation – you may forget everything that you’ve learned. Plenty of foreigners think that the phrase – feel yourself means – I’m feeling right now myself, that’s my vibe, and so on, when actually it means – a more primitive thing when you bust a nut.
Among ratings and marks, we start to ask ourselves – where I’m in this evaluation or rating? Forbes has such Top 30 under 30, Times, and so on. Though we all want to be good or best, super-productive, and hyper-efficient. But how to evaluate your success in your adult life? Might be – money? The more money you have – the more successful you are! For most people – yes. Maybe – that’s why despite machines taking our labor activities we still overwork even more than people before us.
Hunters used to hunt and gather for 4 h a day (40 000 BC). 18th AC – 8h (but 150 days per year) for other days they ate what they’ve gathered. During the industrial revolution, 19 AC when machines started helping while people logically must’ve started doing less – work hours increased to 16 h for 6 days a week (as well as children and pregnant women) was the top of overworking and over-productivity – which isn’t good at all. Thankfully, these started to decrease nowadays, though from 1960-2017 they stayed in one place. Maybe now we became a bit more efficient?
Nowadays
Right now – we are not starving and don’t face this thing mostly, but we still work a lot and hard, trying to be productive. Why? To have a good income, and increase our status. But the problem is – when we move from being poor to being rich – nothing changes. In this move, we start to have new inquiries and ambitions. And we start to work more so we can make these a reality. We become on a leash of inquiries and ambitions.
To be ahead of the competition, to get a promotion, not demotion.
In Japan, office workers are asked to work less – as overworking in Japan can be up to 16 h per day. After that, we can’t be shocked that they sleep in transport, in parks, cafes, shopping centers, bookstores, and staircases. They even have a special word for it – karoshi translated into “overwork death”. Fact from history – due to karoshi – the premiere minister of Japan Keizo Obuchi has passed away. During 20 months of his leadership, he had only 3 holidays. Someone will say – what productivity! But at what cost? Don’t go to such extremes, please.
But okay, not all of us are such workaholics, we all are different… though everyone surrounding me is working pretty much.
In the 20th century – when a person went out of work he became free – 16h of his life is its – do whatever you want. While WE are constantly online! Answering work emails even during holidays or weekends. Surely it depends and is variable from company or project, but still.
Though, the remaining time we try to spend on courses, self-improvement, how to become more efficient, and so on. And the system dictates to us that time must work in our favor – always! And bring money for the future! Profit! That’s why we work 24/7 in order not to be in our imaginable line of profits and incomes at the beginning of the line.
One rich person once told me that you must not only think about how to earn money but think about how to valuably, efficiently spend it, or be a bit more economical.
Let’s conclude a bit – plenty of us are gold medalists, who want to excel, but why does success not always come? Maybe they don’t want it so much? Or lacking motivation? Maybe…, let’s see:
Best-sellers bookshelves are packed with self-development books, business literature, motivation, inspiration, and successful success. “7 abilities of highly-efficient people” Steven R. Covey (Great instruments for self-development, “Think like a mathematician” Barbara Oakley (How to solve tasks faster and efficiently), “Think and become rich” Napoleon Hill, “/rich dad, poor dad” Robert Kiyosaki – it all haven’t started yesterday.
The first self-development book was from the American Walles Wallets – he said that idea is material! And the universe – quote – wants you to have EVERYTHING! Whatever you want! 15 years later it was republished – and guess what? It again became a best-seller. Ain’t that strange?
Let’s remember now:
The easiest recipes are being sold better than the rest. And will be popular – ALWAYS!
But… Are they working?
Dale Carnegie made plenty of money from his books, but when he wrote his – 7 Rules of Happy Marriage – his wife left him. When he said – all illnesses are from negative thoughts – he became ill. Though he started a trend of ”successful success” and doing pieces of training on that theme, which were called – Dale Carnegie training. And now his followers have a million pieces of training, schools, and courses on ”successful success”. As well as some of them.. even became psycho-cults…
If you wish for success so much, as your next breath – you’ll get it! © John Henley.
Who was the founder of the first psycho-cults called Lifespring that spread across the world. You couldn’t miss the trainings even if you had serious or important things to do, take care of, wear a clock, or go to the toilet. If you needed the toilet – you could do your things in a cup.
Such totalitarian cults were formed from people’s friends who completed the course and were actively looking for new blood. Shall we see its structure?
Structure of those
Firstly, friendly atmosphere – people were asked to meet, and hug, later – dances and physical activities – which make people closer, but critical thinking – lower. Dancing, music, and other emotional exercises people start having different states of mind, mania – when they have a huge energy, and productivity boost and are easily influenced. Surely, when you get together and have time together there is nothing bad, but when it’s done to throw dust in your eyes and get more money out of it – dancing could be done in a different place.
The courses were successful! Though only for the organizers of these who gained huge profits. And as side-effects, these trainings broke the psychics of followers – one decided to sacrifice his son, and one woman thought that she controls the traffic lights. As well as waves of life-endings arise.
If we talk about fine endings – people just spend their money and for a short period become hyperactive and hyper-motivated for success. But why can it be bad?
Hyper-inspiration can work badly on you – Yerkes-Dodson Law on a scale of x – Motivation, y – productivity.
As the line/wave increases – from doing nothing to calmness, to being tired, later you go for being drained – panic/anger and later end up in nerve breakdown.
The more difficult the task is – the more motivation is needed. As simple tasks for us become routine. And we have less pressure on doing them, whilst difficult tasks, without extra pressure, arise nervous feeling. And solving hard tasks during hyper-activity is the worst solution.
Secondly, psycho-cults implement problems into the person. They do that by saying – your profit is your choice! You yourself chose that life!
Understanding
When you understand that – erm… it wasn’t me who chose that. I want a different life – a happy one! With lots of money… Maybe something is wrong with me… Basically, the system made a person think like that. And maybe in a folks life, there wasn’t yet the opportunity to boost its life. Growth opportunity – where the spark arose and it went forward.
And you can say whatever you want – I’m the best, I have everything, I’m on top of the world! But… It doesn’t work. And with time you become upset. Also what starts putting pressure on you is the success stories of other people, try to be over-efficient and over-productive. Though let’s get into where the growth of these stories starts…
Maybe due to capitalists like Rotshields?
No
Here you’ll need to dig deeper into our history and one field that stays with us almost all our human life, and it’s different from nation to nation mostly.
To be continued in Part 2 of the Blog…
