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to be successful from the philosophy of Frederick Nietzsche.
Frederick Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, and philologist
who is widely known for his unconventional ideas about morality and religion.
He was one of the main precursors of existentialism and although his ideas were controversial
among the traditional thinkers, he showed people the true nature of life and how individuals
can shape their future with independent thought.
He wrote some of the most magnificent books the world has ever seen.
Some notable mentions are: “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, “Beyond Good and Evil” and “Twilight
of the Idols”.
According to Nietzsche, to be successful means to live life to the fullest, following your
own mission in life and your own values.
His teachings have shaped the lives of many people; from psychologists to poets, dancers
to several successful modern day entrepreneurs.
So with that in mind, here are 5 lessons from Friedrich Nietzsche which we can adopt in
our lives in order to be successful.
Don’t follow the herd Nietzsche says, “I mistrust all systems
and avoid them.
The will to a system is a lack of integrity.”
Nietzche was a stubborn advocate of individuality and he often warned us of the dangers of losing
our free will and integrity while trying to fit into a system.
His famous term herd mentality represents a tendency that the average mob exhibits while
acting out their systemic roles.
They are gathered around a central Ideal and they are following it blindly.
However that usually comes with a nasty trade-off.
You get the security of belonging to a group and having each other’s back, but you lose
any real sense of authentic individuality.
Groups have a tendency to exclude people and ideas that seem strange to them.
You could have an ingenious idea that is far beyond people you are surrounded by and they
may meet your swaying away from the norm with disapproval.
In those situations they are trying to cling to their Idols which can be both real people
and ideologies and they think that your individuality and free thinking will undermine the short
term security of the herd.
Real world examples of this highly abstract concept are everywhere around us.
Imagine a young and up-and-coming entrepreneur trying to get their ideas out there in order
to create a well-functioning business that is both profitable and of great benefit to
the society and the environment…
While implementing their noble goal, they often face resistance from the very people
that are afraid of change.
Imagine that you were the first person to suggest the audio book format.
Firstly, you would get a lot of resistance from some of the readers that are way too
attached to the material object of a printed book.
Not to mention the stress of having the audio book format appear on the market and be ready
to compete with the long-standing consumer habit of buying a physical book.
Both readers and book publishing companies would desperately try to keep the things as
they used to be, initially.
This is exactly what holding on to your idols means.
That is what they are doing by insisting upon keeping the status quo.
They might simply just not see the big picture but if you don’t give up, and keep moving
forward, you will end up creating a new business model that - in this case - offers job positions
as well as a new consumer habit that is way better for the environment because it does
not exploit the precious lungs of our world, our trees.
The problem with most of us is we give up on our endeavor as soon as we face the slightest
of resistance.
We think of it as a permanent setback.
Nietzsche, however, warns us about the resistance that you may face while challenging the status
quo of the herd, and you may fall into nihilistic traps of believing that nothing really makes
sense and that there is nothing worth fighting for.
You will feel like giving up because of the emotional pain you were experiencing while
trying to get your ideas across.
In this case, Nietzsche advises us not to give up and to keep moving forward.
2.
Embrace your inner Dionysus According to Nietzsche “You must have chaos
within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
Nietzsche, in his book, Thus Spake Zarathustra emphasized the importance of being in touch
with your chaotic side because chaos highly correlates with creativity, one of the primary
drivers in our lives.
Every new situation is symbolically represented as chaos, or as the unknown and our creativity
is our ability to adapt to new situations.
To be creative is to be spiritually healthy and nobody embodies that creative spirit better
than Dionysus, the Greek God of wine, religious ecstasy and fertility.
According to Nietzsche we must be in touch with our inner Dionysus, our creativity to
navigate through chaos and to be truly spiritually healthy.
Our so called routines, on the other hand, are in the domain of order, rationality and
the known.
Take the regular 9 to 5 lifestyle of today: You repeat the same old routine while at work
and once you get home you tend to give in to the pattern of consumption that is the
overarching ideal of our modern day lifestyle.
The more we spend on food and shopping and the more time we spend mindlessly consuming
social media content, the more our creativity tends to get atrophied and we look for an
easy way to escape the unpleasant chaotic situation and retreat into the soothing comfort
that our modern day lifestyle so easily affords us.
The harsh reality is the more we escape, the tougher it gets to confront the chaos and
uncertainty.
Because our capacity to deal with the unknown diminishes, we feel even more anxious about
the idea of getting out and living, which makes the products of the comfort industry
that much more appealing.
We are caught in a vicious cycle.
Our inner Dionysus tends to die off in our westernized, rational and comfortable environments.
Similar to the duality of Yin and Yang, each of us have two main sides to our personality:
a rational one, the consciousness, the responsible, Apollonian side, similar to Yang and an instinctual
one, the subconscious, emotional, Dionysian side, which is similar to Yin.
In Nietzsche’s view, the way to be successful or to achieve any greatness, is by the way
of achieving a harmonious totality, which is to balance the two parts of yourself: the
Apollonian side, Apollo being the Greek god of Sun, of knowledge, and the Dionysian side,
Dionysus being the complete opposite, the god of wine, fertility, and madness.
You have to be organized, responsible, logical, but at the same time, leave room for the more
artistic part of yourself, your creative side, your emotional side.
According to research, business leaders who are innovative, who can think of new ideas
that are more likely to be successful.
Every business or any kind of commercial setup must be able to compete with its competitors
and keep up with the latest trends in the industry.
You will have to make some decisions to ensure that the productivity of the business increases.
To do that, you need to be creative to discover different ways of doing things to achieve
a better result.
3.
Find a father Nietzsche advises us that “Whoever does
not have a good father should procure one” Nietzsche's own father, a Lutheran minister,
died when he was just five years old.
It is known that he loved his father very much, and that his father's absence was painful.
Soon after his father passed away, he lost his brother, and Nietzsche was raised by his
mother alongside his two sisters.
Having lost his own father at a young age and after experiencing various strained relationships,
Nietzsche recognized the importance of a strong, encouraging guide in life.
In business, this could be translated to finding a good mentor – to inspire and guide you.
Whether you’re running a start-up, or you’re a manager in an organization, there will be
many challenges that will come your way.
A mentor is someone who has been there, done that.
They’re someone you can turn to, ask questions and get advice.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was mentored by Steve Jobs.
Jobs was mentored by Mike Markkula -- an early investor and executive at Apple and Eric Schmidt
mentored Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google.The connection between a mentor and a mentee can
be the most powerful relationship not only in your professional lives but also in your
personal lives.
If you want to learn any instrument, let's say you want to learn the guitar, you will
go to someone who already knows how to play it.
Similarly when you realize an area in your life like your marriage for example needs
improvement, or when you set out to do something like run a marathon, having that encouraging
mentor is extremely important, as it will influence what you do and how you turn eventually
out.
So if you want to be successful, align yourself with someone who has succeeded in a similar
pursuit.
We cannot allow ourselves to think we have all the answers because we never will.
Which is why having a mentor will help you turn the daily adversities of life into successful
habits which will build your internal resilience.
For your personal achievements and improvements, your mentor could be your friends, family
or colleagues who have already achieved the goal you are working towards and for your
professional pursuit, you can find great mentors in Professional networking events, Online
mentorship networks, Industry Meetups and on dedicated websites like Linkdln.
4.
Have a clear vision for the future As we learn from Nietzsche: “The future
influences the present as much as the past.”
The Will of Power which also means the will to live is one central concept in Nietzsche’s
philosophy and Will is by definition directed towards the future.
This vision of the future shapes one’s present reality as much as the memories of the past.
According to Nietzsche, the Will of Power is what gives us reality, is what makes us
who we are.
The way you see your future has a big influence on how much you enjoy life and how much confidence
you can be in achieving your goals.
Things are no different in the world of business: A company evolves as long as it has a clear
vision over the future, S.M.A.R.T.
goals and a set of strategies to deal with potential failures.
As an entrepreneur, the way you see yourself in one year, in five years, in ten years,
will shape the way you create your business plans, the way you talk to the other people,
and the way you negotiate.
It will also shape the very way you view your own story: if you know where you are going
and have a strong vision of the future, then you will tend to remember the key moments
from your past that are particularly relevant to your journey towards that specific future.
If you see yourself becoming a millionaire in five years, then your failure to complete
a Ph.D might be a fortunate event as it has prevented you from wasting 3-5 years of your
life in universities instead of starting your business.
One of the most important steps in having a successful business is to create an overarching
vision of how your business will look in both the short and long term and you need to write
down what kind of mentality a person who conducts that kind of business should have, how they
should behave in business negotiations, how much risk they should take, and so on.
Then you need to incorporate this mentality in your daily activities, fake it until you
make it, so to speak.
For example, if you own a restaurant, you might create a vision to have five restaurants
after five years and you will see soon enough that the way you speak with high level clients
will change and you will attract potential investors towards you, they will sense you
are aiming towards something big.
The other aspect of having such a vision of the future is that you will see your past
failures not as failures per se, but rather as lessons: for example, you won't blame yourself
anymore for wanting to introduce a new menu which lowered sales last time, instead now
you see the event as an experiment from which you have collected precious information on
your customers preferences.
5.
Get Stronger In our final quote from Nietzsche for this
video, he reminds us “Out of life's school of war—what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger.”
Researchers from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management have established
a causal relationship between failure and future success, proving Nietzsche’s adage
that “what does not kill me makes me stronger”.
In contrast to their initial expectation, they found that early failure in one’s career
leads to greater success in the long term for those who try again.
Nietzsche’s life itself was full of suffering, on an emotional and physical level as well
as on a professional one.
He lived most of his life, wandering in the Alpine mountains, where he wrote some of the
most magnificent books the world has ever seen.
Sadly, he didn't get much recognition and wasn't able to sell much of his work.
At age 44 he had a mental breakdown while watching a horse beaten by his driver.
He ran over to the horse, and said "I understand you".
He never recovered from this tragedy and his mental breakdown took his life after eleven
years.
However, in spite of his tragic life, Nietzsche was able to encourage the millions of people
out there who are scared to try and pursue their interests because of a perceived failure.
Most of us are just happy to live in the comfort of our cocoon, not willing to take any risks
in life, avoiding any danger.
We are afraid of getting out of our comfort zone because we fear failure and because of
our fear of failure, we always copy others in our herd and never fully live up to our
potential.
We need to realize that the most significant progress made in any field has been the realm
of those who stood high on the verge of failing, yet never yielded.
Failure is always guaranteed and inevitable.
Failure doesn’t mean your idea wasn’t valid or that your dream isn’t good enough.
Failure simply means there is something to be learned or another direction to be taken.
If you have just opened up a new business, say a restaurant and have been suffering with
losses, try to use your frustration, anger or sadness to motivate you, to be creative.
Figure out the problem behind your losses - it could be the taste, or the lack of variety
in your menu, or it could be the ambience, take the necessary feedback from your customers
and then aggressively work on improving it.
Do not let the fear of a new possible failure stand in your way.
Find meaning in your suffering and learn from the experience.
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