The Myth of Personal Success

I just finished watching many graduation speeches made at my alma mater, Harvard University, and one made by Jensen Huang, founder of Nvidia, last week at Taipei National University. All the speeches have one common theme. They are encouragements from the speaker, based on his or her personal life experiences, how if we follow certain steps that they themselves considered monumental in their success stories, then we could all move closer to be more like them and be successful, whatever that means, and “change the world.” It seems like all graduation speeches need to promote something big, something impactful, and anything that will change the world.

I am skeptical of such an agenda, and I dare to pronounce these speeches to be irresponsible and misleading guidance to fresh graduates. History makers are outliers and none of them are so perfect that they should be role models for humanity. I am concerned that these big graduation speeches over-promote and over-emphasize leadership as the ultimate goal for humanity. This leadership myth totally disregards, ignores, or at best, minimizes those people who have a servanthood mindset and who diligently make small improvements everyday by serving and loving all of their neighbors. I encourage my mentees to be more like these servants. I am concerned that these big graduation speeches over-promote and over-emphasize leadership as the ultimate goal for humanity.

This leadership myth totally disregards, ignores, or at best, minimizes those people who have a servanthood mindset and who diligently make small improvements everyday by serving and loving all of their neighbors. I encourage my mentees to be more like these servants.

You see, for me, mentoring is not about how I can teach my mentees to be more like me. I agree that coaching can be a better term but I don’t know how to name those who I am coaching – coachees? Even though my official title at the company is ‘teacher,’ I shall continue to use mentor for the time being. From my years of mentoring, I have come to focus on exposing the blind spots of my mentees. I don’t find asking my mentees to think big and to do big are helpful, meaningful, or theological. This myth of pursuing personal success is a slippery slope to depression and a life of meaninglessness. It is what the bible teaches regarding the nothingness of accumulating earthly possessions that will all disappear when we die.

I hope you will continue to follow us and read what we continue to post. Our focus is on our being instead of our doing. All the irresponsible graduation speeches that I have watched on Youtube are all about what we can do. The myth is the assumption that what we do will help us become better people if we simply just set goals to do good. In reality, it is our being that determines how good our doing can be and will be. Some might think that this is an unconventional upside-down doctrine. Instead of copying or following, I teach my mentees to be different, to keep learning, and to keep improving …. not just in what we do, but also in every aspect of our life that accentuates our being.

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Absurdism