ARE YOU BEING TOO DELUSIONAL?

When you think of the word “delusional”, what would normally come to your mind?
Is it that dreamy thinking or fantasizing about something, or someone?
Then when you read this word, does your brain naturally attach it to a certain age of Generation Z, or to be more specific, “young buffalos”, which is an online community description of young people?

When I asked this question, I had also prepared myself to expect that with different readers and listeners, there would be different answers already. There could be many other interesting visualizations of “delusional” besides the ones I shared above. However, in this article, I used the question “Are you too delusional?” to refer to people who are not mature enough, those who are in their 20s and 30s, and those who are on a journey to experience new things in life.

This topic appeared in one of my articles called “My Story” when I had just finished chatting with a young person. She shared with me the successful life of her friend who is the same age as her. Even though she was only thirty years old, the other girl had many valuable assets, and many quality relationships, not to say they are beyond the ability of a young person to have, such as meetings, eating out with experts who regularly appear on several reality TV shows, even some famous people in the showbiz.

After listing out her friend’s achievements, she suddenly told me, “However, I think that my friend seems to be a bit delusional about herself!”

I sat and listened to her from the beginning of the story until she interrupted it with that sentence. I asked her why she thought that way. Then, her answer also allowed me to experience a new perspective on the success of people who are at a very young age. Nonetheless, I would like to keep her answer a secret for now. Let’s move on to the next part of the article!

If you pay attention and observe around, especially on social networks, you will see that today’s young people succeed a lot earlier. I know everyone’s definition of success is different, but in general, we will often label a person’s first success as one of these things: having a high status/position in society, having many valuable properties, being able to go to many places with their money, or everything all at once.

Moreover, in this article, when looking at today’s young generation, I can also see that youngsters nowadays have had the opportunity to develop their talents across borders just only through social networks. The opportunities and potential to create incomes of new majors have appeared, helping several youngsters to suddenly become rich after a short time. This is very different from my generation and my ancestors’ time. Considering the same success, but in the past, it would take us 10-20 years, even at older ages, to finally achieve one of the above goals. Perhaps that is why adults cherish, and preserve our achievements, and success, in general, will be quite sustainable.

Nowadays, many young people have been successful at the age of 25 or in their early 30s, both in material and entertainment aspects. I truly congratulate them. I do not cling to the idea that “only old people can get rich.” Because if young people have success, know how to share, how to manage financial plans, and develop themselves constantly, they will maintain their success in the long run.

However, I also have another perspective when seeing some young people living through their prime time of “quickly becoming rich”. When they are not mature and wise enough to carry the responsibilities and the weight of success, they often slipped into the path of falling or being somewhat delusional:

The illusion of when someone recognises their talents, that means they are truly talented. Then, they will fall asleep on that victory, forgetting that out there, “When a mountain is high, there will always be another mountain that is higher.” Moreover, sometimes, the recognition of others is just a courtesy to them, that is all. If not wise enough, some youngsters would be “The frog in the well that never understands the sea.”

The illusion of when knowing a few high-quality relationships in society, you immediately see yourself as higher than many others, yet forget that if relationships are easy to build, they are also easy to lose. Relationships can define who you are, and which social rank you belong to. However, what you often forget is, relationships are also something you can not manage. If just because you see someone’s profile is excellent and rush to think that they are worthy to associate with, sooner or later you will start creating fantasies, from which it is easy to fall into a situation of ignoring close relationships or sincere friends who are right next to you. Even the glamor of someone could be a big trick for you.

The illusion of thinking the compliments from people around you are all that they always think of you, whether it is the first time you meet or you have known each other for a long time. There are many things in this world that we cannot control, and others’ thoughts are one of them. We can listen to what people say, but it is impossible to define that is 100% what people truly think. Therefore, never be too confident in others’ compliments. If you receive praise, sincerely be grateful and forget about it. That is because if you rely too much on compliments, it will be a double-edged knife that stirs up your inner complacency, and this is not good at all!

Being delusional about success is not difficult, nor does it require too much time, perseverance, or effort. I know nowadays, there are a lot of tools that help create income, which leads to shortening the path to success for some young people. However, if you become successful in a short time, then there would only be 2 cases: 

• First, that person is truly lucky, and sometimes that luck is a “sweet trap” that the universe sends to you. 
• Secondly, we do not see those people’s hidden efforts from before. We only know them when they are successful. Then we assume they succeed quickly in life.

Therefore, it is easy to fall into the illusion that success is not hard, and are confident that you can achieve success just like everyone else. However,  remember, not everyone will be lucky the first time, and even if there is luck, it will not happen too many times. It is all due to the process of trying, training, failing, correcting, and repeating everything persistently!

My friend, illusions make you happy for a while, but in the long run, they will cause you to fall into the trap of easy satisfaction that you built up yourself. Illusion is a kind of feeling that sometimes the insider will not be able to recognize. We are just considering the job aspect. As for the emotional aspect, the illusion appears more, and often happens when we determine our importance in the hearts of others on our own, and then give ourselves inappropriate “rights”. In the end, the ones who get hurt and suffer are ourselves because of being delusional and abusing our powers.

Let me share with you this little trick to test if you are being delusional or not: whenever you start to feel that you are BETTER THAN OTHER PEOPLE, that is the moment when illusions start to rise! The obvious manifestation of this feeling is that we begin to feel like the center of any crowds, or among our acquaintances. Sometimes, it could be that you will start to be less modest and show off too much about your intelligence, wisdom, and achievements on social networks, or in front of others.

Whenever you feel yourself doing so, know that you are about to sink into delusions. Those small delusions may lead you to act arrogant without you even knowing. I do not recommend you deny your efforts as we still recognize and encourage ourselves every time we achieve any achievements, despite those achievements being small or big. However, let’s just stop there. Be aware that your success is not necessarily something too important in this life.

Always keep a wise, conscious mind, and a humble attitude inside a sincere, warm heart – these will lead you towards sustainable success over time.

Much love,
Truly Inspired®