How to Stop Achieving Success Vicariously

I was guilty of enjoying the feeling of achieving success through others.

Every time I got obsessed with a particular thing and wanted to achieve great results, I found people who were successful in that area. I spent hours stalking them on the internet. As I discovered more stories about their achievements in the area, I found myself basking in their glory.

Instead of using it to inspire myself to work harder and achieve success, I satisfied my appetite for success by seeing them win at life.

While I have done this several times in the past, I came to realize this only after coming on Medium. After a few mediocre articles earning a couple of dollars, I started looking for people who made it big here.

The crème de la crème. The top cream of the site.

I read stories after stories about their earnings, success, and book deals. I looked at the screenshots of their monthly earnings. I even went and searched them on Google.

It felt really good. I saw their success as almost mine.

When I could not replicate 15k dollars a month paycheck, my intensity of looking at their profile increased. I searched for more successful people’s monthly statements. It was only after looking at their dollar signs, I found myself getting content

Their achieved gold satisfied my desire to get gold.

1. Self-reflect

Keep a self-reflection journal.

I discovered my vicarious goal satisfaction with the help of my self-reflection journal. As I jotted down my feelings on the pages of my journal, it helped me come face to face with this unhealthy coping behavior.

A self-reflection journal is like a mirror. When you pour your heart out, it shows you the real, hidden feelings that you might not be aware of.

In order to reflect, it requires one to answer questions, either on a daily or weekly basis. Some of the questions that I tend to focus on are :

What am I grateful for today?

What did I learn today?

What are my goals? How am I working towards them? How much is left?

Where do I want to be in life?

What is the biggest trouble in my life? What am I doing about it?

Where do I want to be in the next 6 months?

These questions allow you to become more self-aware about your feelings and desires. It can help you learn more about the vicarious successes that you are enjoying, and in the process, help in dealing.

Additionally, self-reflection has been proven to bring greater self-esteem, creativity, self-compassion.

2. Set Goals

Goal setting is another way to overcome vicarious success.

By setting goals, it can help you bind yourself to reality, instead of fantasizing about the results. Goals provide you with the framework and the end result that you need to work towards. If you do not reach the ‘goal’, it can serve as an indicator that you did not actually work towards it.

4 ways you can set realistic and achievable goals are

Design a plan. This plan should include the what and how of the goal setting.

Explore the pathways to reach the result. This will allow you to commit yourself, more firmly to the goal.

Define the result in detail. You should know how will you know that the goal has been achieved.

Make yourself accountable. Let people close to you know about the goal. This way you are more likely to stick to the hard work and reach the results. Maybe, have a close friend keep a tab on you.

According to the E-E-E model of goal setting, goals play an essential role to enlighten us, encourage us, and enable us. This way, you would no longer be just dreaming about success through others, but actually pursuing it.

3. Take a Break

Take a break from checking other’s people stats and successes.

When the urge to feel the satisfaction from other’s achievement comes over, do not give it to it. Keep your eyeballs restrained to only your stats and outcomes. This could be quite challenging, initially.

I like to compare this to giving up on your sugar addiction. It makes you happy but is harmful to your body. Giving up on sugar would mean stop taking something that is lighting up your serotonin. It is going to be difficult.

2 tips that can be helpful in breaking away from this habit are

Start with baby steps. In the beginning, allow yourself 10 minutes of scrolling through other’s profiles. As you go about it, gradually decrease this duration.

Replace this with some alternative. Spend this new free time on yourself. Work on your own projects. Having an alternative would help you not to go back to the old habit.

Final Thoughts

There is a biological basis of why humans enjoy other succeeding at a task, and seeking pleasure from that.

Research suggests that our brain modulates positive feelings about our self by relaying it to the rewards center. This allows us to feel rewarded even when it is someone else who is getting the victory

Here, acceptance is the key to success. Coming to terms with your vicarious behavior is not easy. Realizing that I was living through other successful people was an uncomfortable feeling. I felt like a cheat.

However, the entire process of reorganizing my thinking and working hard to overcome the bias has given me hope that I can do something by myself. I don't necessarily have to depend on other people to win for me. I can fetch the reward myself and even get ahead if I work hard enough.

This has helped me be in better control of my life. No longer am I allowing someone else to take the reins of my dreams and wishes and do it for me.

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

― Henry David Thoreau