Tag Archives: Subtle art

The Cost of Excellence – The subtle art of handling Success?

Excellence demands excellent expectations of self. To be great at something, a superhuman level of dedication and commitment is required.

The money, fame, prestige comes as a consequence of hours and hours of training on a craft, for which a different kind of an effort has to be put. This is the first cost, which only a few amongst us can pay.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg, as the real cost of Excellence comes after you have excelled. Most can’t experience it, and hence are ignorant of it, as it only comes after a lot of effort, dedication and discipline.

The Second Cost of Excellence

The cost of Excellence mentioned above, the struggle, the discipline, the effort, is the first cost and very small as compared to the second one.It is just more glamourised as it is more sensory, it can be seen, heard, touched and more people are aware of it.

But the second cost is more subtle, it doesn’t need to paid on your way of becoming excellent at something. It is more like a consequential cost of the outcomes of being excellent. To know about it, one has to truely excel at some aspect of life otherwise experiencing it is out of the question.

The second cost of Excellence which comes after the results of being excellent at something is often looked down upon as humans are so desperate at being excellent. This sublte cost involves:

  1. Adjusting to a new world of money, power and fame beyond which you previously had.
  2. Loneliness which comes with being unable to share your issues with the world as your excellence makes you appear perfect, and only perfection is expected out of you.
  3. Judgement as All your actions and inactions are seen through magnified lenses.
  4. Expectations to live up to the world’s view of you and sustain your super levels of effort for ever.
  5. Living with your old mindset with new toys, balancing the obvious inflated ego, an overwhelming Vision and a  deeply competitive attitude.
  6. Pressures of always seeking perfection knowing the world is complete because of its imperfections.
  7. An inability to seek help outside because of your self image of excellence and the inability to find fault in self, as they are so few. Check the Johari Window 
  8. Being surrounded by people who are afraid to be honest with you as they want to keep you pleased.
  9. A sense of guilt, self doubt and self judgement at your failure to make peace with the consequences of your own excellence.
  10. The distractions that come with being succesful.

The Subtle Art of Handling Success

As life quality improves, more and more people are commited to achieve excellence in different avenues of life. And they actually are, but they seem to lose their way once they have realised their initial dreams. Distractions, failure to find more purpose and new passions, lack of motivation to keep going forward derail their excellent journeys.

But it’s all too hard to see with an inflated ego, with dishonest company who can’t give you bitter truth and with fast paced life in which is hard to slow down and find yourself away from your roles.

So that makes handling success a subtle art, which is not an everyday job everyone can do.

With Swasthya, my holistic health and life coaching organisation, we do recommed reading the subtle art of not giving a fuck and also helo you master the subtle art of handling success.

I don’t work with many everyday people who haven’t realised the second cost. I work specifically, on invitation and recommendation, with the second kind of people who have realised excellence and suffer at the hands of the second subtle cost.

If these excellent people can be realigned and recentered, they carry the potential to inspire a generation, create massive global change and live as inspirations for the rest of the world.

All it needs is deep listening, unconditional love and helping them return to their natural self, which is easier said than done as their being excellent compels them to have a huge sense of separate identification, as that is what gets them to be excellent in the first place.

But if we can help them first recognise and then tame this beast of an inflated ego, we can help them harness the abundant energy inside and put to it to awesome use. The cost of Excellence then turns into the investment for excellence.