The Pursuit of Success
Lately I’ve been trying to read more. I figure, if I read and learn more, I can grow and make more money or maybe eventually become somewhat famous. So naturally the first two books I picked up were Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, and the other is Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad Poor Dad”.
Now, don’t let the titles deceive you, they’re actually good books. My first thought when I heard of each book was “oh boy, more people getting rich by teaching others to get rich”. But both authors had had years of experience before they wrote these pieces and it’s pretty obvious after reading the first couple chapters.
A few themes that I’m already starting to notice between the two books are these. First, ways of thinking are what make someone successful. And second, we are all based on emotion.
If you put these two takeaways together you run into a problem: success is based on logic and thought, but humanity lives on emotion.
The Pursuit of Wealth
Okay, I should explain, so let me set the stage with a quote from “Rich dad poor dad”:
“Good,” rich dad said softly. “Most people have a price. And they have a price because of human emotions named fear and greed. First, the fear of being without money motivates us to work hard, and then once we get that paycheck, greed or desire starts us thinking about all the wonderful things money can buy. The pattern is then Set.”
Kiyosaki’s not-dad (rich dad is his friend’s dad) then goes on to call this pattern the rat race and blames it all entirely on emotion. Which makes sense doesn’t it? We go to work because we’re either afraid of not having enough, or greedily wanting more. It’s not just that we need to (which I imagine ‘rich dad’ would say is a lie) but that we’re so ruled by our emotions that we can’t devise any alternatives to working.
And look, there are a ton of conversations that can be had about our culture and economic systems producing or limiting our options. The way I look at it, I individually cannot control that, but I can control how I respond to it.
The Great Motivator
Nearly all that we do can be traced back to our emotion, we seek relationships because our emotions lead us to fear not being loved or feel like we deserve love. There is a part of us that seeks romantic partners because we feel like we need it. If we can define an emotional act as any action that is motivated by a feeling, then there isn’t a single thing we don’t do as an emotional act.
We make music and art as a response to emotion, we seek friends due to emotion, we pay bills out of fear, we flip light switches in rooms out of fear of not being able to see. Our existence itself is even a result of emotions between our conceiving parents.
The Pursuit of Fame
So now that we’ve learning this lesson from Kiyosaki, let’s turn to Dale Carnegie and see what he has to say:
“Sigmund Freud said that everything you and I do springs from two motives: the sex urge and the desire to be great. John Dewey, one of America’s most profound philosophers, phrased it a bit differently. Dr. Dewey said that the deepest urge in human nature is “the desire to be important.” Remember that phrase: “the desire to be important.” It is significant. You are going to hear a lot about it in this book”.
Carnegie later goes on to say essentially that the way to win others is to make them feel important. Which, I believe we can agree, is to appreciate the emotiveness of humanity and capitalize upon it.
So two hyper successful people (depending on how you define success) both writing about 60 years apart agree on this: humanity is ruled by emotion. Kiyosaki stating that people end up slaves to their emotions and fall into a rat race all their lives. And Carnegie stating that people are slaves to their emotions and so therefore to build successful relationships you must inspire good emotions in them.
The Takeaway
So what is the takeaway and how can we apply this to our daily lives? Well, I’m going to finish each book and see what they say. But at the moment I think that even just being aware of the emotion within us and others motivating our every action will help. I picked up those books because I had either fear I would live my life unnoticed, or greed that I felt I deserved to be recognized. Or maybe another part of me can explain it that sounds less harsh, but it still comes from a place of emotion. I’m even writing this blog post because of these same feelings.
Now this may sound like I’m boiling down all of humanity down to a bunch of emotions, and I think there’s a lot of evidence for that if you dig into history. But I don’t think that it’s always a bad thing.
Think about it, our emotions and more specifically our expression of our emotions in forms of art are what make us each unique and individual. Our capability of this expression is what separates us from animals and gives us value, as well as a ‘soul’.
You are so much more than just chemicals firing emotions throughout your body, but being aware of them can help you navigate life more effectively. As it did for Robert Kiyosaki and Dale Carnegie.
That’s all for now, thanks for reading.
One response to “We Are Emotional Beings”
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