5.f 留心成功者说的话

Make Time Your Friend 5.f: Pay Attention to What Successful People Say

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-05-19 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113151558/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/445.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

Everyone longs for success. For some reason, everyone regarded as successful is also glad to share their experience of success. When those smartly dressed people stand on stage and hold forth, even if their looks are plain, they seem radiant. Every sentence, every word, even every character they say seems to be full of countless deep meanings, resounding, each word a pearl. The people in the audience, although their minds are full of flights of fancy, still consciously struggle to concentrate, wishing they could write down every word to go home and chew over.

However, listeners ought to have their own wisdom and understand the basic principles of communication, so as not to sink to the state of "believing whatever people say." When listening to anyone speak, you shouldn't carry a "guarded, doubting" mindset, as that may make you miss important information, because our mindset becomes our tinted glasses, so that we can only receive filtered information. However, in the end, accepting all the information obtained wholesale, without analysis or thought, may likewise be dangerous, or harmful.

First, successful people actually have no need, and no obligation, and often not enough time, to tell all the details. Believe me, if success is measured only by wealth, rights [Translator's note: the original writes 权利 ("rights"); 权力 ("power") is probably meant; the sentence still reads, so it is translated literally], and status (success in the worldly sense), then behind all success, along with countless hardships, there are often also a great many details that simply can't be told to others. For example, the boss of a certain big domestic company will certainly not tell everyone about some of the decisions he made under the pressure of competition from his peers and huge pressure from every direction. If it's so for the pursuit of great wealth, it's even more so for the pursuit of great rights and supreme status.

On some matters, everyone should have the right to remain silent. Those who are sharing so-called "experience of success" should also enjoy this right. Just as American police often say, "You have the right to remain silent, but anything you say will be used as evidence in court." Except in special, extreme situations, none of us has the right to demand that another person tell all the details. But if you take what they say as everything, and what they don't say as nonexistent, then you're at the same IQ level as the fellow in the fable who covers his ears to steal the bell.

Second, almost all successful people, when telling of their experience of success, will consciously or unconsciously exaggerate the price they paid for success, exaggerate the predicaments they once faced and overcame, and exaggerate how difficult their final success was. They don't do it on purpose, because they're human too, and like all ordinary people have vanity of varying degrees that needs satisfying. Their present success is certain, so the glory of this success depends on how high its difficulty was; that is, the worse the starting conditions, the more difficult the present success will appear. Only with higher difficulty can they get more applause, be recognized more strongly, and be admired by people more prostrately.

There's another subconscious root of their doing this: protecting themselves. For everyone who has achieved great success, the most pressing task is to protect their vested interests. This is [Translator's note: the original writes 这根, with 根 ("root"); 跟 ("with") is meant; translated by the intended sense] no different from playing Chinese chess: not only must you keep "attacking," but more importantly you must "defend" firmly. When they exaggerate the price they paid for success like this, what they're saying subconsciously is, "See, success doesn't just come when you call it; it takes a great price; you'd better think it over"—this is another form of "intimidation," essentially no different from the warning "to practice the divine skill, you must first castrate yourself."

In doing this, they also have the support of the audience or listeners. Most people like to hear successful people tell of their hard experiences—the harder the better, and the more bitter and full of grievance, the more popular. The great majority of people live plain lives, even including most successful people—if I'm not mistaken. Films are wonderful for two reasons: first, artistic treatment; second, compression of time—tell the story of a lifetime in an hour and a half, and it would be strange if it weren't full of ups and downs, thrills and danger. However, real life can't possibly be magnificent, up and down, earth-shaking every day; in fact, nobody's heart could bear such a life.

On the one hand, most people never wake up to the principle that "plainness is the real thing" in their whole lives; on the other hand, many people subconsciously hope that all successful people got their success through hard struggle, because they subconsciously feel that only this can explain their own "lack of success," and only this lets them accept their own "lack of success" more naturally. Their subconscious thought, if expressed, might be like this: "See, how hard success is! It takes paying such a price! I haven't paid such a price yet, so not having succeeded is perfectly normal……" In fact, for those who long for success but haven't yet succeeded, what a comfort successful people's "bitter, grievance-filled experiences stained with blood and tears" are!

In addition, and more importantly, even if those successful people aren't deliberately concealing or deliberately exaggerating, all sorts of deviations may still arise when they tell of their real experiences. Successful people, or those regarded as successful, are still human, not gods. Since they're still human, they very likely have the common flaw most people have: "cognitive biases" (cognitive biases, a concept often mentioned in psychology). For example, what was mentioned earlier: "the human brain has a self-protective function: forgetting pain."

So when successful people tell others about their experience of success, they often consciously or unconsciously cover up the mistakes they regret to this day. Because those experiences were too painful, so much so that their brains automatically erased those memories—if their brains function soundly. So the more reasonable explanation is that they aren't doing it on purpose; they just don't know what influence the "cognitive biases" everyone inherently has have had on them. Of course they'll tell of the predicaments they once met, but have you noticed this interesting phenomenon? In their telling, in the end, they always use an extraordinarily tenacious spirit to finally escape those seemingly irreversible predicaments?—such telling of course earns warm applause. So do they have predicaments they still can't solve to this day? I don't believe they don't, unless he lives in another world—heaven.

Also, you must understand this fact: sometimes the experience of "successful people" is of no use at all, because that experience is simply wrong, but the key is that they themselves may not know it either. For example, they happened upon an era of rapid economic growth, when whatever you did made money, and lots of it; so, from a macro view, it wasn't at all what they themselves considered precious experience that was at work, but the macroeconomy that gave them such an opportunity. But who is willing to admit that their success had little to do with their own experience? One of the common cognitive biases humans have is: claiming success for oneself and blaming failure on others or on bad luck. (Psychology has a special term for this: [self-serving bias](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias).) And when those "successful people" do this, they're often not deliberately deceiving you—they may even mean well.

Finally, you should know that some "precious experience," even if correct, may not work so well when applied to yourself. What is most likely to lead you astray is your understanding of yourself. Our elders always tell us "it's precious to know oneself"; what they forget to say, and may not even know at all that they really should say, is this: "It's precious to know oneself—and hard!" Think of the last time you finished hearing a success story and couldn't help surging with excitement, and you'll know how rare and precious self-knowledge is. Of course, there's no need to feel inferior about surging with excitement so easily; everyone is like this—just to different degrees.

For example, successful people often say they don't care about money, that they know the value of character. But you're not like them; you don't have enough money now! Believe me, the great majority of people, when they have no money, find it hard to understand "the value of character" very deeply. You have to eat; your family shouldn't go hungry; when even the basic conditions can't be guaranteed, "what fucking use is character" becomes many people's choice. Cui Jian (崔健) describes it like this: "For love, what the fuck are songs; for life, what the fuck is love." Plain truths often can't be pleasant to hear. Actually, this isn't a cynical or misanthropic way of putting it; it's just a calm description of life by people who have the courage to accept reality.

**One very practical suggestion is: why not do the opposite—work hard to draw lessons from people who failed.** Never mind imitating successful people; even observing successful people is hard. There are many successful people, but very few real successful people around you; what lies behind success is hard to see clearly, the genuineness of so-called success is hard to judge, and successful people consciously or unconsciously beautify and package their experience, and all of this interferes with your judgment. But observing people who failed is relatively much easier, because their failure is often obvious and certain, and the cause of failure is often easy to determine, although those who failed will find all sorts of excuses. Moreover, the number of people who failed around you is obviously larger than the number of successful people, so you have more chances to observe.

So with this understanding, you'll often meet so-called luck—when you're about to make a mistake, someone makes the same mistake before you. Of course, "focusing on learning lessons rather than spending time gloating," this alone is not a very easy thing to do.

The final bit of nagging to add is that the purpose of this passage of mine is absolutely not to overturn your views from now on, making you treat all "experience shared by successful people" as dung from now on. **I just want to remind you that "believing whatever people say is pretty dumb."** Only after careful screening is the real precious experience of real successful people priceless. It's just that, on the one hand, you have to put more thought into screening, and on the other hand, you have to spend more time really understanding yourself, so as to avoid the disasters that "generalizing everything and applying things mechanically" may bring.

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