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Heart Success, turn failure into Success

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Welcome to the last part of my ‘Succes’ trilogi.

In the second post of the trilogy ‘Ego success, Heart success and Self Esteem’ I asked the question -

‘If the above theory is correct then what is normally understood as success, the drive for ego success in our western society, is actually failure! In which case could failure actually be success?’

Here I would like to answer that question , first by taking the teaching profession as an example.

When we fail, we fail by the standards of ego success, our ego rewards failure with a bad feeling which we will probably compound by punishing ourselves even further, so how could this possibly be success?

There is an ego success saying -’Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.’ We all know this saying is a way of putting someone down.

Because they were an ego success failure, the only thing left for them is to teach that which they failed to be ego successful in.

And yet, written in 1962-

‘Teaching is more than a noble profession. It is a vocation, a calling.. The teacher is the most important person in any civilization, as on him depends the molding of the nation.’

http://randallbutisingh.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/teaching-is-a-vocation/

What Randall Butsingh (the world’s oldest blogger!) was saying was not that teachers should be given fame and fortune because of their importance, to strut their ego success stuff.

He was saying that a teacher becomes a teacher because they want to be heart successful.

Yes of course they need their work to be paid for, a reasonable living is not much to ask for such an important profession but after that there is not a lot of ego success available, it is all about the heart success in the classroom.

Nine years later Randell was to write-

‘I was very dissatisfied with what was taking place in school; where political expediency ousted teaching ethics resulting in a breakdown of discipline, insubordination and the degradation of Education in the schools of Guyana’

http://randallbutisingh.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/teaching-no-longer-a-vocation/

There is no doubt now that teaching, like many other professions, has entered the realm of excess ego success, with schools now being rated by their success and parents lying about where they live or re mortgaging their homes just to get their children into a ‘better’ school.

Randall’s first comment is made in the 1962, af 1971 the disillusionment has set in,

I 1987 Margaret Thatcher was to say

“There is no such thing as Society”.

In the same year Oliver Stone’s movie ‘Wall Street’ came out with the famous line

“Greed, for lack of a better word , is good”

Excess ego success was about to take off big time.

And so the earth and it’s communities began to moan with the exploitation needed to satisfy the demand for ego success.

Until this year, 2010!

This year has seen the biggest natural and human disasters ever recorded, as I type whole towns are being washed away in China , millions of Pakistanis have lost everything in the ongoing floods. Floods, landslides, drought and fires have killed people in most of the continents of the world.

And yet still our governments give only lip service to global warming but continue to gauge wealth by the ‘succes’ called growth. Continually exploiting resources, growing production in services and goods no one can any longer afford to buy.

OK so where am I going with all this?

I cannot say for sure if there is any connection between economic growth and global warming, I have no proof that global warming is man made but I am convinced there has been an explosion in the desire for ego success and this has fuelled the economic and environmental disasters we are now experiencing, ego success has failed us!

So can ego success failing be successful? Well I think it can

At the centre of most religions, and beliefs like Buddhism and Taoism are teachings about being charitable to one’s fellow human beings, this make take the form of tangible goods but also applies to having charitable thoughts.

Charitable thoughts and charitable deeds are at the centre of heart success.

It is possible that I am completely wrong, more likely I am partly right, but it is time to wake up, open your eyes and see what has happened to our world, our communities and our sense of self.

I think the beginning of the end of a human cycle is taking place, as many civilisations have done before us, often as a result of environmental change at the peak of the civilisation.

We have a choice, descend into an ego based chaos of every man for himself or grow into a new age where heart success is valued as success.

Most people want a caring society, its time to create a society that cares and it is this that can turn the failure of excess of ego success into real success, heart success.

‘

“All those who are unhappy in the world
are so as a result of their desire for their own happiness.
All those who are happy in the world
are so as a result of their desire for the happiness of others.” -Shantideva

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Ego Success, Heart Success and Self Esteem.

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My previous post ‘Vil du virkelig vil have succes’ was an idea quickly put into text, fresh out of my head, but over the days since its post I realise that there is far more to this concept of Ego and Heart success.

If we look at the Taoist Yin Yang symbol ☯ it is the balance between the Yin and the Yang that is important, this concept is reflected in life and nature. Homeostasis is the constant physiological response to regulate and balance our bodies in response to inner and outer environmental change.

If we can use the Yin Yang, balance, homeostasis approach for success then it is clear that true success needs to be a balance of Ego success and Heart success.

In my previous post I say “the excess of pandering to ego’s needs is now killing the planet, our communities and our sense of self.”

This is not because ego success is inherently bad, it is because the culture of excess of ego success is an imbalance that cannot be sustained.

It is clear that a musician is driven by ego to learn the structure and physical dexterity needed to make their music, ego success will be their drive to perform and be recognised, but it is their heart success , the absolute joy felt during and after playing a piece of music successfully that sustains and balances their success, so much so that an audience is superfluous.

If the above theory is correct then what is normally understood as success, the drive for ego success in our western society, is actually failure!

In which case could failure actually be success?

If we fail to achieve ego success there is no doubt about it, we feel bad ! But why should that be?

I have a love hate relationship with self esteem, part of me thinks it is an unproven, illogical concept, and yet another part of me has to accept most people buy into it and find it a helpful way of describing how they feel.

I like to see the concept of ‘Self Esteem’ as a computer program that one can download, the program is called self esteem but as in any program it is the sum of its parts, which are the files, if any one of the files is missing or corrupted the whole program will not work.

On a forum I visit there was a post from a young woman who had been quite overweight and though she had lost most of her excess weight, her body was now covered in stretch marks.

She hated the way her body looked so much that she couldn’t believe any man would love her. To the point of actually ending a relationship with a guy who obviously loved her for who she was, on the basis that he could do better and shouldn’t have to see such an awful body .

I do not want to go into what this poor woman’s corrupted or missing files were. I just want to use the example to show how her problem was created out of the global desire for ego success.

Those with excess ego success punish those who have little ego success , those with little ego success punish those who fail and those  who fail punish themselves!

The young woman above is punishing herself for not having ego success but even worse, part of that punishment is not allowing herself any heart success.

Of course none of us in the real world with any success admit to punishing anyone but that is what we do every time the trappings of our ego success are flaunted.

I bring home a new car, my not so ego successful neighbour may be full of heart success and come over and be genuinely happy for me but more likely he/she will react as if they have been punished for not being as successful as me.

In fact they may punish themselves into doing two jobs, working night and day for a year just so they can come home one day with the better bigger shinier version of my now one year old car!

This hierarchy of punishment starts at the top and works down, the young woman in the forum will have spent her life seeing ego successful models in bikinis, knowing her body is not allowed into the ego success club, possibly even being mentally punished by her peers with their ego success bodies.

The young woman pushed away a beautiful thing, she thinks because of low self esteem, I think because her only understanding of acceptance is to punish herself for what she has learned is perceived as failure by those grossed out on attaining ego success.

Hvorfor? Because ego success can only exist at the expense of the those exploited.

Unless of course it is balanced out by heart success .

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Vil du virkelig vil have succes ?

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Do you really want success?
Most, if not all, would answer this question with a resounding Yes.
So what can I possibly have to say? Tell you the ‘secret’ of success?
Well I have no secret to tell you, just an opinion.
There are two types of success, ego success and heart success.
Ego success is what we normally understand as success, it is the success our ego needs.
It is the part of us that continually needs to be validated, so success is perceived as having
the perfect partner,
a good job,
money in excess,
to be chosen above others by something or someone,
to have respect,
to be told we did well,
to have and hold power,
to have control
A short list of some of our ego’s needs, and though they created our communities and our sense of self, the excess of pandering to ego’s needs is now killing the planet, our communities and our sense of self.
The western social construct is built around the ideas of success and growth, it is in fact one massive great Ponzi scheme, built on growth.
I doubt a downsize to sustainable growth could even be achievable .
The run away growth that we need to sustain any kind of living in a way that has become ‘normal’ is tearing the world apart because underlying all the theorys of economics is the ego’s clawing for success after success, whatever success ego has today, when it wakes up tomorrow it needs more, bigger and better, and for every bigger and better success for the ego something or someone will need to be exploited to the same degree
There is only one reason we have massive corporations, immoral bank bonuses, crime, totalitarian governments, lying incompetent democratic governments, poverty and inequality and that is to feed the successful participating individuals egos.
So what is heart success? When I speak of heart I do not mean the romantic heart I mean the warmth felt inside for doing a good thing. An action that brings no fame, no fuss, ingen penge, no congratulation just the knowledge that it was the right thing to do.
The anonymous charity donor,
pride in doing ones work to ones best ability,
not making judgments about others
caring for and working for the local community (for free)
respecting and taking care of animals
respecting and taking care of the environment.
Just some examples of the heart success one can feel in life that is wholesome.
So maybe the next time you look at someone not dressed as well as you, not as attractive as you, who doesn’t earn as much you, and is not as ego successful as you, try not to judge them because they may actually be far more heart successful than you could ever know.
This post is based on an idea taken from a Buddhist teaching.
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