Penalty of Success

One of the Filipino-Chinese influences I have now is Mr.Francis Kong. I believe the man has it says in terms on success, business and life itself. I’ve attended his seminars once and was lucky enough to shake hands with him. I haven’t bought any of his books but I regularly check his blogs. (www.franciskong.com). Just recently, he posted this blog entitled “Everybody loves a winner….or do they really?”. It talks about a thing that I myself was experiencing. It has alot of terms, can be office politics, crab mentality, or even cannibalism. But to quote it further, it talks about the penalty of success that an individual will have to face whenever excel in her/his field, and that’s the antipathy of others.

In every workplace exists a cannibal. These are people who eat you up with jealousy and envy the moment they see you successful and that your success poses a threat to their own. A winner isn’t being loved by all, a winner creates an admiration and envy at the same time. We’ve heard often that adversity tells you who your friends are. Success does, too. Failure and success both reveal who really cares about us – the ones who stick with us through thin and thick. If anything, success identifies genuine friends more surely than failure does.

This kind of mentality is a viral in Filipino culture. Just looking at our own politics for instance, since I was born in 1986 (EDSA 1 Days) impeachment is being raised to anyone who will seat in the presidency. And why? Because everyone else’s thinks they deserve better to seat. It’s bullshit honestly. That’s why I seldom watch news, local news. Coz everyday, you see pure bad politics that they’re exposing and it’s really unhealthy for my mindset who seeks greatness and gratefulness. If I’ll watch it, I’ll just end up with how everybody else’s feels, ungrateful and unsatisfied. Setting aside politics, I can see that PI can really go further and rise its well being, if only, most have the right mentality. And one of those is cannibalism. Instead of mourning and complaining on how good others get, why not look into your own folly? Who knows you lack on something too? Or maybe it isn’t the right time for you and something else’s better planned for you? Instead of spreading ungratefulness and bad image of the person to someone else, why not just try to work on where you lack and be better?

I’m fond of Koreans and Japanese. Not only their drama (movies and teleseryes) that I love, I love how these people value and love their country. I love how they value unity which is very far from PI. I’ve once read a friend’s blog that’s an essay of her Korean student. In that blog, the Korean compared how different PI and Korea is. In 90’s, South Korea’s economy was way behind PI’s economy. Their economy suffered a lot after the battle between the North and South ended. But unlike PI, most Korean stayed put in their country and those who were residing abroad went back home to help their country stand up. They didn’t care who gets the credit or not, instead they just worked together in unity to bring their economy back on track. And our time now, who would have thought that South Korea belongs to the Top 5 most expensive city? (Seoul). Reading that blog made me see how different our PI culture is, which no wonder why our country is still behind.

Its Christmas time again, so before I go further, Merry Christmas. J Hahaha. Most pinoys are probably exchanging gifts by now. Other than spreading and giving material gifts, maybe we can stop cannibalism and start working on spreading unity and gratefulness as a gift. J This is the perfect time to start it before the great financial crisis truly hits us. :)