It’s a sad truth and many of us have experienced it first hand. Maybe you were overweight and when you finally started hitting the gym, your other overweight friends would make little snide comments about you and subtly try to sabotage you by tempting you with fattening food, saying that’s OK, to live a little, and on the extreme end, start to spread rumors that you got surgery or became bulimic or started snorting cocaine to explain your dramatic weight loss.
It’s a pretty nasty side of human behavior.
So why do some people do these kinds of things?
Well, this type of behavior tends to obviously happen with those in your close social circle and the reason for that is with you changing, it threatens to upset in their minds, the social status quo.
They don’t want any change in their perceived “hierarchy”. If you do “better” than them, in their minds, that means they go down the totem pole. You’re not fitting into the role they pegged you in anymore. When you keep trying to get out, they keep trying to push you back in.
Now a more broader reason for them not wanting to see you succeed is that if you do, it makes them start to question their own lives. They start to feel like they’re “behind” so rather than do something with their lives, they try to keep you down so you don’t get “ahead” of them.
They’re trapped in this low level competitive model of thinking.
There’s some pretty twisted actions going on there as a result of that kind of thinking so be careful who you share your success with, but more importantly, who you spend time with.
Here’s an easy test to use to see whether or not the people you spend the most time with will support your success.
In everyday conversation, casually mention somebody you both know who’s doing pretty good for themselves. See what their immediate reaction is.
If someone you know is doing financially well, they may say that he’s greedy, a cheater, brown noses, etc., so anything negatively related, you know best not to tell them about your own goals or better yet, to keep some distance as well.
You can use the same test yourself.
When you hear of somebody doing well, what’s your IMMEDIATE reaction?
Don’t lie to yourself.
If you find that it’s negative, that’s OK.
It means you still got some work to do.
So how should you view somebody else’s success?
How do you get out of this low level competitive model of thinking?
By realizing we are all going on our own separate journeys. That no journey is higher than another. We’re all going our separate ways and that other people reaching their destinations doesn’t take away anything from our own journey.
In fact, it adds to it because if they can do it, so can you.
You’re inspired by them. You congratulate them. You’re proud of their hard work.
You use it to fuel your own journey.
Small minded people are the ones who always cut other down for their success.
Mature minded people always build one another up because they know there’s more than enough to go around.
Now people always ask – is it ok to use this as motivation to prove to all the haters that they were wrong?
I think in the beginning, if it gets you going, by all means use it, but I think what you’ll find is your motivation will change along the way.
It will come from the process itself, from the benefits that you reap, and the whole “I’ll show you” mentality will slowly start to fade away to the point where you don’t brag or rub it in and you know what?
That infuriates the haters even more because at least if you bragged, they could then point out how you were all stuck up and everything, but you’re past that now.
WAY past that.
And the people who try to bring you down don’t even register on your radar anymore.
You just do your thing while they get stuck and suffer in their own hell of thinking.
