Imagine reading a story titled “Pursuing Success.” That would be an inspiring story, wouldn’t it? Maybe—but maybe not. It might well be the story of someone whose never-ending chase for more and more success leaves them unsatisfied and incapable of happiness.

Though it isn’t a conventional medical addiction, for many people success has addictive properties. Obviously, success goes with praise. To a certain extent, praise stimulates the neurotransmitter dopamine, which contributes to all addictive behaviors.

The desire for success may be in humans’ nature, but specialness doesn’t come cheap. Success is tough work, and it requires bearing the cost of losing. In the 1980s, the physician Robert Goldman famously found that more than half of ambitious athletes would be willing to take a drug that would kill them in five years in exchange for winning every competition they entered.

Unfortunately, success is endless. The goal can’t be satisfied; most people never feel “successful enough.” The high only lasts a day or two, and then it’s on to the next goal. Psychologists call this the hedonic treadmill, in which satisfaction wears off almost immediately and we must run on to the next reward to avoid the feeling of falling behind.

People should get off the treadmill. But quitting isn’t easy for addicts. For people hooked on substances, withdrawal can be a painful experience, both physically and psychologically, research finds that depression and anxiety are common among outstanding athletes after their careers end. Olympic athletes, in particular, suffer from the “post-Olympic blues.”

Just like wine, success in and of itself is not a bad thing. Both can bring fun and sweetness to life. But both become bossy when they are a substitute for—instead of a complement to — the relationships and love that should be at the center of our lives.

The Happy Man

The happy man lives objectively, and has free love and wide interests, through which he secures his happiness. To be the receivers of love is a vital cause of happiness, but the man who demands love is not the man to whom it is given. 【小题1】 But it is useless to attempt to give love as a calculation, for it is not sincere and is not felt.

What then can a man do who is unhappy because he is enclosed in self? If he is to get out of the vicious (恶性的) circle of unhappiness, it must be by true interests. But before that, he should analyze his trouble first. 【小题2】 If fear is his trouble, let him practice exercises designed to give courage.

Admit to himself every day at least one painful truth. 【小题3】 Exercises of this sort will enable him to admit facts and will free him from the fear to a large extent.

【小题4】 Do not say to yourself in advance, “I should be happy if I could become interested in stamp-collecting,” and thus set to work to collect stamps, for it may well happen that you will altogether fail to find stamp-collecting interesting. You may be pretty sure that true objective interests will grow up as soon as you have learnt not to be self-centered.

All unhappiness depends upon lack of integration (融合). There is disintegration within the self,consciously and unconsciously or between the self and society. 【小题5】 Such a man feels himself a citizen of the universe, enjoying what it affords, untroubled by the death because he feels not separate from those who will come after him.

The air we breathe is so freely available that we take it for granted. Yet without it we could not survive more than a few minutes. For the most part, the same air is available to everyone, and everyone needs it Some people use the air to live on while they sit around and fed sorry for themselves. Others breathe in the air and use the energy it provides to make a magnificent Jife for themselves.

Opportunity is the same way. It is everywhere. Opportunity is so freely available that we take it for granted. Yet opportunity alone is not enough to create success. Opportunity must be seized and acted upon in order to have value. So many people are so anxious to “get in” on a “ground floor opportunity”, as if the opportunity will do all the work. That is impossible.

Just as you need air to breathe, you need opportunity to make it. It takes more than just breathing in the fresh air of opportunity, however. You must make use of that opportunity. That is not up to the opportunity. That is up to you. It doesn’t matter what “floor” the opportunity is on. What matters is what you do with it.