5.b 成功的定义——“成功学”的核心缺陷

Make Time Your Friend 5.b: Defining Success: The Core Flaw of "Success Studies"

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-05-19 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113101858/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/441.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

What exactly success is, everyone seems to know, yet no one can say clearly, and it's hard to find a unified definition. The dictionary's explanation is simple and clear: so-called success is reaching an expected goal. This explanation is correct, of course, but incomplete, because the "goals" each person may expect are really vastly different.

However, in the "success studies" books that fill a whole counter or even a whole section of almost every bookstore, you can see what they have in common, which is that the definition of "success" is simplified and vulgarized. Recently *New Weekly* (《新周刊》) [[1](#footnote_0_441 "New Weekly, 2007, No. 16, overall No. 257.")] had a good article titled "There Is a Poison Called Success" (《有一种毒药叫成功》). About the vulgar and oversimplified definition of "success" in "success studies," *New Weekly* satirizes it like this:

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author: from New Weekly; not Li Xiaolai's own words.] ……In the logic of success studies, if you haven't made "a mansion, a luxury car, a million a year," if you haven't become a successful person envied by others, it proves you're no good; you've committed "the crime of not succeeding"!
>
> Helping you "realize the value of life," "develop personal potential," "make a million in three months," "have a car and a house," "retire before thirty-five"……success studies run rampant in the workplace and online; ambitious crowds get lost in multiple self-improvement courses and short training classes; success gurus are flying everywhere, and success training has grown into an impressive industry.
>
> ……When success for the whole nation becomes a fanatical craze, and success rises into a mainstream value like absolute truth that everyone flocks to, success studies is a poison pill, and those who believe in success studies are reduced to its victims.

Interestingly, although everyone says "this world changes fast," in the end we always find "nothing much has changed." Today "a mansion, a luxury car, a million a year" are things many men dream of, even the conditions girls use to choose a spouse. Leaf through old newspapers: in the sixties and seventies, girls choosing a mate required the man to have the "four big items": a wristwatch, a bicycle, a sewing machine, a sofa; in the eighties, "four big items" were also required: a TV, a fridge, a tape recorder, a washing machine; the surface changes over twenty or thirty years reflect an essential sameness—all reflect people's strong wish to "possess goods or resources they have never possessed."

Actually, everyone knows the principle "you can't have everything." Nobody is a fool. But the wish to "possess goods or resources they have never possessed" is so strong that people begin to turn in another direction: "What I have isn't much, but it's more than you have! That makes me very happy." Look closely at the "success" many people define, and in the final analysis it can be summed up in just four characters—"a cut above others," that is, what street language calls "bada××" (牛×). [Translator's note: the original writes 牛× with one character masked; the full word, 牛逼, is a coarse term for "awesome," rendered "badass" in this translation.] If you can't be more awesome than everyone, then best be "below one, above ten thousand"; failing that, you should at least be more awesome than most people, or many people.

Defining "success" this way has long since doomed one to an awkward ending. Wealth, power [Translator's note: the original writes 权利 ("rights"); 权力 ("power") is meant], status, whichever [Translator's note: the original writes 也说 ("also say"); 也好 ("whichever") is meant; translated by the intended sense]—defining success with these things is just a difference of wording. What the great majority of people pursue is no more than this. If being more awesome than everyone were success, there'd be no successful people in this world—God is the most badass [Translator's note: the original writes 牛逼, a coarse word, rendered "badass"] (if he, she, or it really exists)—and that's not even a person, but a god. Yet most people never feel there's anything wrong with their definition. Otherwise how could there be people willing to give up even their penises to become lackeys?—examples of this are everywhere, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign; grab a handful at random and countless ones slip through your fingers.

In fact, "envy," defined by Christianity as one of the seven deadly sins, also arises this way. Envy arises from a distorted understanding of the difference between [Translator's note: the original writes 之的, missing 间; translated by the intended sense] oneself and others. Most people can't escape all their lives the emotions produced by comparison, whether positive or negative. Some say happiness is a comparison. Someone else joked that for a man, happiness is his income always being 20% more than his brother-in-law's. One advertising slogan is rather popular, and in fact is based on exactly the same psychology: there's no best, only better.

But the problem is that comparison is relative, and the relative never ends. So we can easily imagine that for those who build their idea of happiness on the results of comparison with others, happiness and joy will be hard to obtain forever and ever; even if they occasionally have a feeling of happiness and joy, it's bound to be fleeting, because there are always people who are younger and more beautiful or more handsome and dashing than them, with higher incomes, greater power, more honored status and rank, and larger amounts of wealth.

Some people see through all this, but choose to escape. These people think "all things are empty," everything is just illusion. So they claim they can leap out of the mortal world and stay far from the hubbub. Actually, this too is just a sign that their mental power is too weak.

Other people also see through all this but don't choose to escape. Instead, they calmly accept it. They use their mental power to distinguish which joys or happiness must be built on comparison, and which joys or happiness can be had just as well without comparison. Then they spend their time looking for, even creating, the joy and happiness that can be had without comparison—of course, this too costs a lot—and then live without regret, rejoice to their hearts' content, and suffer calmly.

A surgeon feels very joyful and very happy, because he has just snatched a young life back from the hands of death. A middle-school teacher feels very joyful and very happy, because he has just clearly explained to a group of kids about 15 years old the subtle relationship between the sensible and the rational. A researcher at a biology institute feels very joyful and very happy, because lately she feels that climbing out of bed every day, trotting all the way to the lab, and then observing and recording the bacteria she's cultivating is just too beautiful, too magical. A mother feels very joyful and very happy, because she's now sitting by her child's bed, and the child's face in sleep is so calm, beautiful and radiant, so lovable……

Life can't completely avoid comparison, but in fact there are really very, very many joys and happinesses that can be had without comparison; they're just often overlooked. So a great deal of time is used to pursue joy and happiness that can only be had through comparison, and in the end all that's gained is more pain. But time won't flow backward merely because the result is unbearably painful; the nature of time determines that none of us can really have the chance to start over. If merely because of such a result one starts pinning one's hopes on the next life, that's even more lamentable. Of course, there's something more lamentable still: pinning one's hopes on the next generation, regardless of the fact that one's own experience is entirely "wrong experience," simply and stupidly thinking that one's experience is, after all, "many years of experience"……

As long as you can really understand the roughly one thousand characters of content above, we can use the mind to gain liberation. Starting today, after listing all the things you want to do, carefully distinguish: is the joy and happiness I get after doing this thing necessarily something that can only be had on the basis of comparison? Then mark, and give priority to carrying out, those courses of action that bring joy and happiness without comparison. Time will pass as always, minute by minute, year by year, but you'll be amazed at the change in your life. Every minute, every second, every day, every year, the quality of time can actually be so different.

I suddenly wonder why so few people seriously study "the science of happiness" or "the science of joy"? [[2](#footnote_1_441 "Actually, psychologists started researching this field long ago. It's worth getting to know this person: Martin Seligman—the founder of Positive Psychology. The "happiness" professor who has recently become a hit at Harvard can be counted as Seligman's successor.")]

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Footnotes:

1. New Weekly, 2007, No. 16, overall No. 257. [[↩](#identifier_0_441)]
2. Actually, psychologists started researching this field long ago. It's worth getting to know this person: [Martin Seligman](http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/) (马丁 塞利格曼)—the founder of Positive Psychology. The "happiness" professor who has recently become a hit at Harvard can be counted as Seligman's successor. [[↩](#identifier_1_441)]

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