There’s a fine line between inspiration and intimidation. – Drew Maughan
Back in high school, a certain teacher (who may or may not have been teaching GCSE English) made a point of showing people up – especially when they’d put a foot wrong – in front of other people! But when someone did something particularly well, whether it was one of their teacher’s pets, the author of a book we were reading or an actor in a video we were watching, they would lavish praise on them in front of other people.
From that time, it dawned on me that there are two responses one can have to hearing about (or seeing) someone doing well for themselves, and having all kinds of rewards and recognition heaped on them.
The first response is to become inspired to do well for one’s self, having seen someone else do well. Usually this happens when someone demonstrates that achieving a certain goal is not only possible, but it’s feasible.
Probably the most prominent example I can think of is the four-minute mile barrier, broken by Sir Roger Bannister in 1954. He was the first to prove it could be done, and several people were able to do it after that. (The current record is 3:43, set by Hicham El Guerrouj, in 1999.)
For me, the most heart-rending example of this was at the end of the film Bend It Like Beckham, when the father of the protagonist – having had his passion taken away from him – started to play cricket again, having seen his daughter play a major football game.
The second response is to become intimidated, which is a lot easier than you might think. You might feel that you’re not good enough, or that you don’t have the right credentials, to achieve the same thing. People might have attributed certain “powers” to this person.
Whatever the reason, you might feel that there’s some secret, or something that’s out of your control, as to why that other person was able to succeed and you weren’t. This often leads to becoming resentful, even hateful, of other people – especially those who have achieved success.
Speaking from personal experience, I remember being incredibly intimidated back in the 1990s and early 2000s: there were hundreds if not thousands of news reports and articles in the papers, talking about the “youngest person ever” to achieve this or that. These were people who had accomplished things that I wish I had accomplished, who always happened to live in some remote part of the UK, were more attractive/popular/socially accepted than me, had support from other people, and above all else were recognised by others.
It can be very hard to draw inspiration from successful people these days, particularly in the “X Factor” culture where people don’t really have to do much to become famous. Society is fixated on analysing failure to death, and we don’t really hear much about how certain people became successful (or at least we don’t quite hear the truth).
However, regardless of how someone became successful, I think it’s valuable to be able to learn how they did it. By studying successful people, one can determine how someone became successful – or whether they were successful at all!
I don’t necessarily think that doing exactly the same things as a successful person did will work for everybody (because we’re all different), but in principle if you want the same results as a particular successful person, you would have to do exactly what they did and how they did it.
It’s very easy to become intimidated by successful people, especially as they are hailed as “superhuman” by people around them, eventually making you feel small because you haven’t succeeded [yet].
Try to remember: you may not be one of those successful people, but you are still a very special person – and you can be successful in your own right.
Tags: achievement, Credentials, feelings, First Response, Gcse English, Hicham El Guerrouj, Inspiration, Intimidation, Lavish Praise, Passion, people, Protagonist, Rewards And Recognition, Roger Bannister, Sir Roger Bannister