I am Successful, High Achiever — Life Still Sucks
Questioner: So my question is based on a scenario. Imagine a young person who has spent their whole life being a high achiever. Since childhood, they have been rewarded with praise and love only when they met a certain benchmark.
Acharya Prashant: Can you speak without looking?
Questioner: Sure.
Acharya Prashant: So, from childhood, we have been taught that if we achieve something in life, we will get rewarded for that, like achieving a grade, achieving a good trophy, achieving a specialized tag, then we will get rewarded for that. And we just fall into that rat race of achieving a particular thing. So, do you think this is the right way, or do we need to get some enlightenment? Our psychological strength needs to be recognized in ourselves.
Acharya Prashant: You tell me, how does it feel to run after something just because you are being hounded from behind? Please tell me, how does it feel? And you could be a high achiever. You could win that race. But what prompted you to run in the first place, love, or fear, or greed, plain ignorance, pressure? What was it?
I have nothing against achieving big. Please go ahead and achieve as much as you want to. But the thing is that achievement is not sentient. Achievement is simply the name of an event. We are here to talk of the achiever. What will you get by achieving if the goal achieved is, in the first place, not your own?
I somehow manage to enchant you, hypnotize you, and tell you to fetch one of those flowers there and do that before any of these three reach there. And you are a high achiever. You dart, you pick up a flower, bring it here, and you are awarded a medal. What does that give you? You were never in love with that flower in the first place. This entire episode was a display of slavery. You are obeying somebody's command.
Why did you go to that flower in the first place? Yes, you have succeeded. But how can it be called your success when it is not even your goal? Is the goal yours? Is the desire yours? If you were not taught, no not taught; not trained, no not trained, not conditioned to run after certain things, would you still run after them?
If you get a second chance, with nobody to tell you what to do in this big world full of opportunities, would you still make the same choices? How many of your choices are fresh and original and truly yours? And if your choices are not yours, what do you get? Even if you succeed in reaching and picking, plucking that flower, whatever, what did you get?
The machine is told to do a few things. The machine does that. What does the machine get from that?
Isn't it better to try and maybe even outwardly fail in something that is actually your own, than to be a big achiever in the language and ecosystem of the crowd? What would you rather be? Please tell me.
What's the starting point, that or this? Where does the story start, with those objects or this subject? Then why, in your discourse, is it always about the object and never about the subject? Why does achievement exclude the achiever so much? Why is the achiever hesitant, rather scared, when it comes to looking at himself or herself?
Achievement is wonderful. But achieved what? And achieved by whom? How is it possible that so many distinct persons, diverse personalities, high caliber, high talent, rich in IQ, and yet there is almost zero diversity in terms of goals? Please tell me. How is it possible?
How is it possible that almost the entire campus seems to be running after three, four, or five frozen kinds of targets? And the campus must be having students in thousands. The entire batch, I suppose the BTech batch itself is close to a thousand these days, right? More than that? 2,000. Yeah. How is it possible that these thousand or 2,000 people are all set upon the same thing?
Don't you sense a discrepancy there? Don't you smell something fishy there? It simply implies that the goal is not your own. You're wasting yourself by rushing after that.
You won't have too many chances. You must be 20 at least, right? Two times, three times, the time you have already spent and that's all you have. That's all you have, and you want to expend this most precious and absolutely limited asset just wandering blindly.
The arrow of time moves only in one direction. Why can't it be the direction of clarity, the direction of love?
You will not realize how soon you find you are aging. You might be here, in the blink of an eye, at your 25th reunion, that happens, and you'll say, “It was just yesterday we passed out. It was just yesterday we were occupying these chairs.” And it's your 25th reunion here.
I had mine last to last year, and that's what everybody was saying. What's interesting is, half of the batch now feels it's too late, too late to reverse, to retract, to redeem. Now the philosophy is: first 20 years after passing out, you chase the objectives that society gave you; now, for the next 20 years, let's discover what we want and chase it.
So it's admitted that the first 20 years since graduation have been de facto wasted. You want that to happen? You want to be a corporate good boy? Nice necktie, decent appraisals, happy seniors, delighted bosses, that’s what you aim at? Yeah. Yeah, that's what most of us...
Isn't it very interesting, sitting here, this fellow nearing 50 is wearing the kind of outfit this fellow in his 20s should be wearing. And what is the fellow in his 20s wearing? Black and white, that's what they do. They strip you of your colors.
Let there be clouds, and rainbows, and flowers, and butterflies. Youth is not meant to be spent in black, white, and gray.
Questioner: So my follow-up question is, like, how can someone find the psychological strength to walk away from a successful lie that feels like a lie?
Acharya Prashant: No, you don't need to find any kind of strength. By saying that you need to find strength, you are condemning yourself to be weak. You are delivering the verdict and you are stamping it. You are saying, “I am weak. Therefore, I need to find strength.” Why else would somebody say he needs to find strength? First of all, you have to be weak, right? Only then would you say, “I need to find strength.”
Why do you want to inflict that statement on yourself? You're not weak. You don't need any strength. You need insight. You need clarity. You need honesty. You need to figure out why, in spite of being so strong, exceptionally strong, you still choose to act meek and weak. That's what you need to figure out.
You don't need to go somewhere, earn strength, or learn strength. That's not needed. You are already strong. But some ignorance, some untested kind of desire or interest, is making you act, pretend as if you are weak. The strong one is pretending to be weak.
If you are not strong, please tell me who is. You are young, you are healthy, you're decently good-looking, you are well educated. What else does it mean to be strong? If you are not strong, please tell me who in India is strong. You're presentable. What else do you need to call yourself strong? It's all there. But it's a choice you are making. It's a value decision. “No, no, I am weak. Therefore, I need to surrender to my masters.”
Now, here is where that self-interest can be detected. “I am weak” that's the flow of logic, “I am weak, I will kneel to my masters, and the masters will provide me certain benefits and securities, and that's why I need to continue pretending that I am weak.”
The moment I declare I am strong, the moment I accept my own strength, I will not admit a master. How will you justify being mastered if you are already strong? And when there will be no master, there will be no benefits, no securities that you'll be earning from that master.
And that is what is preventing you from admitting your strength, just the greed of certain conveniences, certain traditional kinds of securities. That's all.
There is a lot of benefit in pretending to be weak, feeble, diseased, incapable. When you don't want to attend a class, you send in a sick certificate, don't you? Doesn't that happen on the campus? Look at the benefit: “I'm sick, therefore I cannot come to the class. I'm weak, therefore I cannot run. Please carry me on your shoulders, somebody.”
But that's a very sick kind of benefit. You want to avail that, really?
Declare your strength. Roar it aloud. Yes, you are strong. What more do you need? What disease are you carrying, inwardly, outwardly? No disease at all. Nothing.
This is an international-quality campus. You spend years here, and you have earned your spot in this place. How are you still not strong? Please tell me.
Most of you come from privileged backgrounds. Most of you have had good schooling. Not just problem-solving aptitude, you are also good at languages. Most of you, probably all of you. Some of you would also be good at certain sports and extracurricular activities. Some of you might have benefited from an exchange program and had overseas exposure as well.
How are you not strong? And you are living in the information age, so you know much more than we did when we were in our second or third year BTech. I made my first email account in my third year, and then you say you are not strong.
What are the contributing factors of strength? Knowledge, right? Knowledge. Basic awareness, physical integrity, all that you have.
Do you see why it is still difficult to courageously just declare it? Because that declaration, spontaneous and simple as it might be, would still be a kind of rebellion towards the world. That's what you are afraid of. And there is no rule that says that a strong one cannot be afraid. What a pity, strong, yet afraid. Why?
It's a simple thing to say, right? “I'm capable. I'm competent. I have it. I'm looking forward to life.” It's a simple thing to say, but you have prospective masters, and they will take it as rebellion. And you don't want to face the consequences. You don't want to be labeled a rebel. That's all.
I'll return to that. You have one life, and when it comes to the moment, every moment comes only once. Lost, it cannot be retrieved.
Why do you want to spend yourself in the service of masters, those anonymous, faceless ones? You don't even know your masters, yet you're still keen to offer service. It's not some kind of allegation, that's the norm. Your batch, my batch, any batch, anywhere, IIT, IIM, Wharton, doesn't matter. That's how it is. It's not about this particular audience.
