What People We Hate Can Teach Us About Success

Here is the one of the greatest reasons why the majority of people NEVER succeed or their success plateaus. The moment someone around them becomes more successful than they are, they instantly become jealous of that person. They start attributing their success to them being at the right place at the right time, being lucky or being plain dishonest. The majority of people do not even spend time doing basic research to figure out whether their assumptions have any truth.

Because they dislike and resent that person, their bias against the person who succeeded doesn’t even allow them to admit that the person they are  being jealous of, may in fact have done a lot of right things and a lot can be learnt from them.

Now, let me take it one step further. There are a lot of things we can learn from someone we do not like even if a part of their success really was based on unethical methods. Here is why – no individual is completely black and white. A lot of good people have made a lot of terrible and even unethical decisions. Similarly, lot of so called “evil” people may have admirable qualities which if adopted can skyrocket our success too.

For example, you can learn public speaking and persuasion even from Hitler. He did a lot of terrible things but that doesn’t mean there is nothing you can learn from him. It’s about the choices you make that define your character, not the skills you learn.

Perhaps there is someone who got to the top and was dishonest also. Does that mean, we can’t learn anything from them? Not true. First of all, what goes around comes around so sooner or later they will be punished for that aspect of their lives. But keeping that aside, is dishonesty the only thing that got them to the top?

Perhaps they were extremely disciplined, had laser like focus, were frugal, knew how to persuade others around them, all of which played a huge role in their success. Instead of looking at that  person in totality, if we isolated the qualities that made them successful, applied the positive ones and rejected the negative ones, this would tremendously increase our chances of further success.

Thus we need to stop seeing role models in totality, where we either worship a person and treat them like a God or we dislike a person so much that we see the devil in them. Instead of seeking out role models, we need to start seeking out role model qualities. This will allow us to see the negatives even in those we like and stop us from aping their negative qualities. At the same time, this will allow us to study the good qualities even in those we do not like, the application of which can skyrocket our success or take it to the next level!