3 Surprising Problems of Successful People

Success is awesome. And achieving goals can be one of the greatest feelings in life. But there is a dark side to success that isn't often talked about. And this leads to some very successful people leading very sad lives, or at least having mental anguish that they don't know how to deal with. They don't know where it comes from. And the worst thing is they feel like they shouldn't have it because they're successful. So this video is for two kinds of people. First off, it's for you. If you are an up and comer, success is coming your way. And I want to help you prepare for some of the negative things that might come with it that nobody else is talking about. And the second thing, the second kind of person is someone who has already achieved success. And for you, you may be carrying around mental baggage that you think is just a normal part of life. And this baggage can be sapping your energy, making you less happy, making you less fun to be around. But you don't even notice it because you think it's just part of being successful. It does not have to be, it does not have to drive you. I'm gonna tell you about three things that you can start to put down today and get rid of that baggage. So the first one of those things is this. It's that success invites a comparing mind. When I first started Charisma on command, I had a very simple goal and that was to pay my rent without having to go get a full time day job. And so that was a pretty simple set financial goal. And that was all that I wanted to do. When I came across someone who had a much bigger business or a huge YouTube following, wasn't really impacted by it, it seemed like they were running their race, I was running mine. They could have their success, I could have mine. And they really didn't have anything to do with each other because of course they didn't. What started to happen when I achieved my goals is that my brain began looking outwards. And rather than pegging the new success goal to a personal financial goal, what it did was it started comparing it to other people, particularly to people on YouTube. And I'd watch different channels and I'd see some that maybe I thought, you know what, that content isn't as good as ours yet. They're so much bigger, we should be beating them. In fact, we need to beat them. That's what we gotta do. And so for a while, success to me would look like eclipsing that channel. And that happened once or twice or three times. And it made me realize something. First off, it was completely silly because it didn't make me feel any better. Second off, I was treating YouTube subscribers like this fixed pie, which either they had or I had, in which we couldn't both share. Maybe they were appealing to an audience that really got a lot out of what they were doing. In fact, I'm sure that was the case. But I treated like no, I needed to be better than them in a very, very fixed way, which is of course ridiculous. And then third, it didn't stop. It was as soon as I got one, then I wanted another. When I beat that one, I wanted another. I just kept looking to the next thing. There's nothing wrong with striving for more, but when you're comparing yourself to people outside of yourself, that is a strong indicator that you have a comparing mind. And that for you it's become about status and not about giving back to the world, which really is what it was for me. And I'm trying to reset center myself here. So for you, if you identify with comparing mind, solution to this is to interrupt that comparing mind. And I made another video about this a while ago. It's still clearly something that I have to keep my eyes on, but it's a great video. It's a solution that works very, very well. It's longer than I can include in this, so if you want to check that out, click the link in the description. Second thing that I saw personally from Success, one of the negative side effects is that it can become a social crutch. And I've seen this in other people, I've seen this in myself. And it's perhaps the most frustrating for me because I should have known better. Back when I was a consultant and I spent my days doing Microsoft Excel in Microsoft PowerPoint, when somebody asked me, charlie, what do you do? I didn't really want to say consultant because I wasn't passionate about it. So I would come up with these ridiculous things. I'd tell them that I was just passing through town because I was in the circus, or. Or I tell them that I was an astronaut working on the International Space Station. Just insane things that were obviously jokes or that they would get very quickly were jokes. And what this did was it started conversation off on a fun bantery note. And so for a couple minutes we go back and forth, we joke around. And of course, eventually I would tell them what I did. But I realized what I was doing is I was letting my personality and my sense of humor carry the weight of showing who I was. And that shifted once I started getting success in YouTube, particularly because I wanted people to ask me what I did. Not so I could be fun or funny or interesting or have a great time with them, but so that I could tell them I have a YouTube channel. Because I was very excited and very proud of it at the time. And I still, of course, am. But when people would ask me, what do you do? And I'd say, I'm a YouTuber. I'd say, oh, really? What's your channel? I'd say, charisma on command. They go, oh, cool. And I go, yep, it is cool. And conversation would die. And that was because I wanted my success to speak for me. And rather than be fun, funny, outgoing, interesting, engaged, high energy, I just wanted to let that success speak for me. And I tell you, I should have known better for two reasons. One, because what do you do? Is one of the first things we talk about in every single program that we teach. And we talk about how you have to answer it in first, a fun way, and then second, to reveal your values through it. So solution here is we have, I believe there's an article that I will link to in the description. If not, it's one of the first things we cover on our newsletter, which is all constantly what I'm talking about at the end of our videos. So if you want to join that, I'll make sure that both of those links are in the description. And the second reason is because I saw this all the time in New York City when I lived there. And I remember one time I. I was out at a club with a friend of mine who was a girl, and she wanted to talk to this guy who she thought was very handsome. So she actually walked up, she approached him, they began to talk, and a minute and a half, two minutes later, she came running back. So I said, what happened? She said, I asked him his name and what he did, and he immediately gave me his business card from Goldman Sachs and started talking about his investment portfolio. And I realized now that that guy, I'm sure he was at Goldman Sachs, he's a smart guy. But at some point he wanted his status to speak for him. And he learned that maybe that or he thought clearly he didn't learn because it wasn't working as well as you would have hoped, that that would make people like him, particularly women. And I've seen that doesn't often work. There's a stereotype that it does. It does not. You need to let your personality speak for itself, which Again, should have known better, because I talk about this often, but we can fall into traps that we should see all the time. So the third thing, the third difficulty of success is this. Not only can success be a social crutch, it can be an internal happiness Crutch. Before the YouTube channel started to take off, I had a pretty simple list of things which I always have known make me happy, and that's spend time with my friends, get, get outside in the sun, get some exercise, eat a good meal. Very, very simple things that are going to make me feel good. And of course, one of them was going out and meeting people. Right? When the YouTube channel started to take off for me, I was in Medellin, Colombia. So Spanish is spoken there. I can speak some Spanish, but it's not as easy for me as English. So making new friends wasn't as easy as it would be for me in English. And so at the time that the channel is taking off, it's becoming a little bit more difficult for me to socialize and make a bunch of friends, and very, very easy for me to check the stats of my subscribers on my channel. So what began to happen is that I developed. I mean, I must have been checking dozens of times a day to see how quickly our subscriber rate was growing. And, you know, I check it over and over and over and over again. At the end, it'd be 200 subscribers in a day. And that was awesome. 200 was so big. And as we began to grow, that number would get to 500 and then 700 and 1000 per day. I'm blown away by how awesome that was. And it made me feel really good because I wasn't going out and meeting as many people as I was typically used to in the States, for instance. What happened, though, is that again, the bar just kept getting raised. And today, if we get a thousand subscribers in a day, I'm bummed because that's not as much as we should be getting at the level that we're at now. But even more insidious than that, it taught my brain that when it needed something to make it feel good or to be happy, not to go hang out with my buddies, who, of course, I still hung out with, or to go out and meet a new person, but just to easily check those subscribers. And that, of course, is the language of YouTube. But if you have a business and you find yourself always checking your KPIs, I have a friend of mine who we spoke the other day. He confessed that this is him. If you are an employee and there's some sort of metric which you find yourself constantly coming back to because it's easier than the things that create lasting happiness, like investing in your relationships, then that can become a problem because success truly at that level becomes addictive. It's so easy to see, to feel, and some of the things that actually make you happy are not. So you'll find yourself getting attached to those stupid numbers which mean nothing at the expense of your relationships. The downside of this is that even when I would notice I would have amazing days, other things would be going on in my life that were firing all cylinders. It was great, but part of me might be bummed because the subscriber count wasn't where I wanted it to be, which is completely ridiculous. So if you identify with this with tying yourself to metrics of success in business, check out again that video why you don't feel good enough. But also add to that, you need to block yourself from checking these metrics too often. Like if you're checking more than twice a day max, even once or once a week, you have an issue. So what I recommend there is setting a bet with yourself or a friend that says every time I check over this amount that I set, I will pay you $20. And very quickly that's going to help you kick the habit. So I hope that that helps three things that you might not see coming that success can bring or that are already existing in your life. First off, that comparing mind social crutches and internal crutches. Those are huge problems that come with success that I don't see people talk about and I hope now you are prepared to deal with if you liked this video. Well, first off, I should say apologies that I'm still in this room. It's Carnival right now in Brazil. I ordered lights about a month ago. They still haven't gotten here and I don't know if they will now that Carnival has started because business kind of shuts down. So apologies that we're still filming in this room. Hopefully I'll have a proper studio soon. If you like this video, not for me, for you, go ahead and subscribe to this channel. I promise I'm not going to be checking the stats nearly as much as I used to, but if you found this video helpful and you want to watch more like it, go ahead, click the subscribe button and you will get them on your homepage. If you want to leave a comment with any topic you'd like to see me cover or questions you have on this video, Go ahead, drop it in comments. The in the comments. And of course, I hope this has been helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.