Atychiphobia- Fear of failure.
Since no one has coined the name for fear of success, I have decided to do it.
Vetriphobia – fear of success. You heard it here first……
We can call ourselves what we want, the multitude, common folk, hoi polloi, the many, the people, grassroots, plebeian, salt of the earth, the lumpen, the masses, the makkal, the rakyat, the citizens… but what is it that separates us from those that cannot be called the above,the heroes of Mankind?
Thomas Carlyle listed the Hero as the following
I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY.
II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. PROPHET MUHAMMAD (PBUH): ISLAM.
III. THE HERO AS POET. DANTE: SHAKSPEARE.
IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM.
V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS.
VI. THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON: MODERN REVOLUTIONISM
Or simply, the Hero as Prince, Prophet, Priest, Poet, Philosopher or God. To which I will add Philanthropist and Politician. Mr Buffet, the Gateses’ ; Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King…you get the drift. Pushing the envelope a bit, let’s add Physycist to the list, Einstein, Feynman, Hawkings. The one hero who can’t really be categorised is Tesla, who seems to have been an Incarnation of the God of Electricity himself.
What separates us lumpens from our heroes, from those whose names and deeds live forever in the annals of history. To me, it is a phobia that is shared by all of us common folk, the fear of success.
We settle into an atavistic mode and stick to the herd. We fear recognition, we shun wealth, we play it safe, we come up with excuses on why something cannot be done, we stop others from trying, we look for faults, we do everything but succeed. I am talking true success here, the type that puts you on a road where each day brings new heights and new goals.
We measure our goals in small minded terms, and once we have acquired these small possesions, we settle back, and we do little more than wait to die.
I have been on a tremendous learning curve this past few weeks, and have had the opportunity to communicate with one of mankinds Heroes. The most obvious difference between him and everyone else, including myself, I know is this, the ability to think, to decide and to act independently, and the willingness to accept failure with the same equanimity as he would accept success. He has neither fear of failure, or of success.
We on the other hand, will read a hundred self help books, pay through the nose to listen to motivational gurus, pray on bended knee as if God has nothing better to do than listen to us, and go home to watch the telly and complain that live has not thrown us the right opportunity yet.
If you want success, learn to take the calculated chance. Act on knowledge and intuition, not because others are acting that way. Do not wait to see others succeed before you follow the same path, see the success coming to you and keep walking to it. Be adaptable but remain steadfast, even when others have quit on you. But most important of all, believe in yourself even if no one else does.
The Buddha said that the greatest wealth a man can have is self confidence, and the greatest power is self control. Cultivate both, no matter where or what you are right now.
We are the dust that coat the shelves of mankinds history, and the heroes are the books that fill them. And as long as we are happy lying in dust, we do not know what success is.
Jeevindra Kumar
p.s. take this quiz to find out the truth… http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/fortune/quizzes/fear_success/frameset.exclude.html
