Less out of fear of being stupid than out of fear of success, we miss out on great opportunities in our lives. Who hasn’t missed valuable opportunities to advance or close good deals simply because of unfounded insecurities?
The fact is that most of us tend to question ourselves and in the process, provoking irrational fear, we sabotage ourselves.
The culprit, the unmistakable source, the cause of all this is called “the inferiority complex.” What’s bad for our lives is that instead of acknowledging our failures and shortcomings, we tend to pass the buck or blame someone else. If we don’t get that promotion, we blame the competitor who was promoted. If we fail to close the sale, we blame the product, its high price, the lack of publicity, or even the ‘cheap’ or ‘stingy’ customer.
The novelist HP Lovecraft said: “The oldest and strongest emotion of humanity is fear.” And doubt is a form of fear that makes us play the blame game
Alfred Adler (1870 – 1937) was an Austrian physician, psychologist, and member of Freud’s inner circle; being also the first important figure to break with Freudian psychoanalysis. To describe human internal states, Adler invented a new language: Napoleon’s complex, feelings of inferiority, inferiority complex, compensation, overcompensation, and lifestyle.
Let’s explore the concept of “inferiority complex.” Adler, unlike Sigmund Fred, believed that striving for superiority is the most basic human drive (not sexuality). Everyone always strives to be better than others. It is not that we are jealous of others, nor that we are envious or much less greedy, it is that we are born to feel superior. This feeling of ‘striving for perfection’ is what motivates humans to reach their potential.
However, when we fall short in our efforts, we tend to “make up” for that feeling of inadequacy with neurotic and often aberrant behavior. For many people, these disabilities and inadequacies become threats to their mental well-being, causing them to lie, belittle, demean, “speak badly” or even slander others. This, then, is a manifestation of an “inferiority complex.”
To conquer harmful feelings of inferiority, three factors must be present in our mind. First, we must accept responsibility and blame no one for our shortcomings. Second, we must feel good about ourselves and acknowledge the fact — often forgotten in psychology textbook catalogs and lists — that being ambitious is a virtue; that we are genetically engineered to aspire to a higher stage in life. To say that money and wealth are bad and undesirable is going against our inner nature. Third, we must have faith in our own abilities and skills and compete, because we cannot win anything if we do not complete it; And the corollary of this point is that the more we train and prepare, the greater the probability that we will win.
The American philosopher Emerson said: “Those who believe they can conquer. Do what you fear and the death of fear is certain.”
In short, if you constantly say to yourself: “I am responsible for my actions or the lack of them” and “Being ambitious, working and desiring wealth is a virtue, it is in my genes” and “Yes, I can!” it will eliminate that monster that is “the inferiority complex”.