Today I watched a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, about creative people and the impact of success or lack it on their mental well being. In case you are interested you can watch it here:
In it, Elizabeth talks about the idea, which was common belief some years ago, that rather than being a genius, you have a genius. A genius being a separate entity, maybe almost like a pixie, that can decide to help or not in your creative process. If this were true, then anything you achieved would not be 100% your success and if you failed, that wouldn't be all your fault either. This protects the person from emotional turmoil and I believe could have the same impact, creative person or not.
Some people might find the idea of pixies a little too hard to accept. I know I do (sometimes I am more logical than I want to be, because after all, how nice would it be to believe in fairies). However, I know that the genius is not the point of what Gilbert is driving at, instead it is just the tool.
Therefore, maybe instead we can think about it as luck - luck that you had the opportunity to try the thing you now do, luck that you chose the path you did, luck that you were born to the parents that you were born to. Or of course, bad luck (but lets stick with the theme of success). In fact in most cases you can probably share your success with those around you - not very often are our achievements solely all on a result of ourselves - what about our partners who worked with us, brain stormed, or simply brought cups of tea and supported us through the mood swings. All your teachers, friends even 'enemies' are partially responsible for where you are today.
Once you start to share that success you will notice a couple of things:
1) You will not feel all the burden of success so acutely as described by Elizabeth.
2) You will appreciate what you have - as per 100 days happy blog post here, when we appreciate things, we are happier
3) You will be giving the gift of happiness to those around you, as you tell them that you appreciate their support and you recognise that they are also impart responsible
4) Through this cycle of appreciating those around you,you will foster trusting, loving relationships, that lead to ever better future collaboration. These people will want to help you next time - and surely this will leave you more likely to repeat or exceed your previous success.
So to me, having a genius, or believing in your own luck can be benefitial.
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