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What is difficult to overcome in order to succeed in life?

The natural slope of ease

What is difficult is not giving up sincerity.

From childhood, we feel the pressure to be a good student, a 'good' son, a 'good' daughter. Later, to be a 'good' employee, a 'good' co-worker, a 'good' husband, a 'good' wife, a 'good' father, a 'good' mother. Not meeting these demands puts us at risk of exclusion and a decline in social standing. Indeed, when our natural behavior does not produce the expected result, due to lack of ability or because our natural behavior is misaligned with social expectations, we are tempted by hyper-adaptation, which consists of seeking only the maximum effect in order to meet social expectations, at the cost of accepting what we find absurd or unfair. This leads us to adopt a social mask, to pretend.

This is the path of ease, and it is through this that one most easily achieves social success. However, one is generally unaware of the trade-off related to the cognitive dissonance it creates between our convictions and our behaviors. Indeed, the absence of struggle leads us, under the pressure of this cognitive dissonance, to gradually, without our full awareness, incorporate the beliefs and values of the social environment with which we were not originally in agreement. As a result, the sincere part of ourselves is progressively pushed into the depths of the unconscious and is only perceived as a simple existential unease, the origin of which gradually becomes unclear.

From the need to compensate and maintain this unease in the depths, potentially 6 harmful consequences can emerge:

This is the Faustian pact. However, it should be noted that, on one hand, the devil does not personally move, so we are not aware that we have signed anything, and on the other hand, the position we take in practice is generally neither an absolute yes nor an absolute no, but an intermediate resulting from successive small compromises. It is simply the economy of struggle, which we allow ourselves out of ease and opportunism, that gradually, through the effect of cognitive dissonance, takes the form of the trio of dependency, mental confinement and irresponsibility.

The temptation of a good self-image through small gestures

As explained in the question 'Why are small gestures for the planet dangerous?', small gestures are a powerful tool for reconciling one's personal interests and a good self-image at minimal cost. However, this leads to lying to oneself in order to reject more serious and more demanding solutions that may arise during life, and thus strongly encourages us to gradually slide down the slope of pretending. The only thing that can prevent us from gradually sliding is to maintain dissatisfaction regarding the weakness of our actions in the face of the magnitude of collective problems.

Fight methodically

For those who choose to fight more intensively, to gradually get rid of the diffuse discomfort, here are the difficult points we recommend working on:

Adopt realistic models

Many spirituality books use the Dalai Lama or Buddha as examples of exemplary behavior. These are poor examples, exactly like taking some super rich individuals as models for financial management. Indeed, the Dalai Lama or Buddha were princes, meaning they had a guaranteed high social status, so they could simply ignore social ambition and its tool, widespread nepotism, without paying the price. Moreover, the documentary Buddhism, the Law of Silence, to which we refer more broadly in the question 'What is an adult?' shows that people who seem like models because their lives have not confronted them with the problem are not necessarily models in the absolute sense.
Proper management of life is to do the best one can with what one has received in terms of favorable circumstances and personal talents. Personal responsibility always plays a role, in the form of setting noble goals as opposed to behaving like a mere cunning opportunist who exploits their environment, and carrying out deep inner work, but the result that one can reasonably achieve varies greatly from one individual to another.

Deepen understanding

Point 1. explains the alternative title considered for this site at the introduction level: a small manual for no longer being deceived by rhetoric experts.

Regarding point 2, see the questions 'Why do humans reason in mass error?' and 'What are the conditions to meet in order to produce a serious reasoning?'.

Regarding point 3, see the question 'What is an adult?'

Regarding point 4, see the question 'What is impermanence?'