In this TED talk, Elizabeth Gilbert reflects on why success can be as disorienting as failure and offers a simple way to carry on, regardless of outcomes.
That is because there are strange and unlikely psychological connection between the way we experience great failure and the way we experience great success. Indeed failure catapults us abruptly way out into the blinding darkness of disappointment, while success catapults us just as abruptly into the equally blinding glare of fame and recognition and praise.
And while one of these fates is objectively seen by the world as bad, and the other one is objectively seen by the world as good, our subconscious is completely incapable of discerning the difference between bad and good. The only thing that it is capable of feeling is the absolute value of this emotional equation.
In both cases the remedy for self-restoration is the same: find our way back home again, as swiftly and smoothly as we can.
But what is “home”? That might be creativity, it might be family, it might be invention, adventure, faith, service. Home is that thing to which we can dedicate our energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.
Image: Pixabay (CC0 Creative Commons)