We are trapped in the story, forgetting that we are the ones who wrote it.

We believe all parents want their children to be "successful." And each of us also wishes for our own "success."

What exactly is success? How can one achieve it?

Recently watched a movie and read two books, and I feel they explain the entire essence of truth.

Movie Free Solo "Free Solo"

The Untethered Soul

Trillion Dollar Coach

Actually, there is another book, which I have shared with everyone before—The Surrender Experiment, written by the same author as The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer. I had the privilege of interviewing him last summer, and the interview video is included at the end of the article.

They appear to tell very different stories. *The Trillion Dollar Coach* discusses "Silicon Valley's biggest secret"—Bill Campbell, the career coach for Silicon Valley's legendary entrepreneurs. Before entering the business world, he was a "not particularly successful" football coach. In his youth, he was a successful player and even served as the captain of Columbia University's football team. However, he stood only 5 feet 10 inches (1.78m) tall and weighed just 162 pounds (73kg), making him an exceptionally small and rare exception among football players.

He left at the age of 37 as an unsuccessful football coach and began searching for his first job. Through a friend from his former team, he landed a sales position at a tech company. It wasn’t until his 40s that he arrived in Silicon Valley. Yet, the "entrepreneurs" he later mentored included Steve Jobs, the two founders and CEO of Google, Mark Zuckerberg, and many others. This list is so impressive and extensive that at his funeral in 2016, over a thousand top figures from Silicon Valley’s tech and venture capital circles attended. And every one of these "big names" considered Bill their "best friend." The companies founded by those he mentored have a combined market value of trillions of dollars, which is why this book calls him the "Trillion Dollar Coach."

This book tells his story, written by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and executive Jonathan Rosenberg, among others.

Alex Honnold in *Free Solo* seems to represent another extreme—an extremely introverted personality, with parents who divorced when he was young. His father took him rock climbing from an early age, and he developed a deep passion for it. However, due to his introverted nature and difficulty in socializing, he immersed himself in climbing early on, saying, "I climb alone precisely because I'm not good at making friends." At 19, after his father passed away, he dropped out of college and traveled around to climb. For years, he lived in his car, ate 89-cent dinners at night, and slept in Walmart parking lots.

However, after years of preparation and thousands of free solo climbs, he successfully scaled El Capitan, a route with a vertical height of over 1,000 meters and an extremely steep incline, which was considered an incredibly challenging path that no one dared to attempt. A single slip would have meant a fatal fall.

As another experienced climber in the film said: Imagine you're competing in the Olympics, and you must win the gold medal—not winning means death. This is what Alex did. Would you dare to try it? But he truly accomplished it, dominating the covers of all sports magazines. It’s no exaggeration to say he created an astonishing miracle in human history.

The book "The Untethered Soul" is about the inner self, starting with the question of who I am.

What exactly is "me"? Perhaps it is the ultimate question. Is the five-year-old me still me, the teenage me still me, or is the present me truly me? Is the happy me me, or is the sad me me? Is the me at work me, or is the me at home me?

The answer is also in the book. If I were to tell you the answer in a straightforward manner, the answer is that all of this—the "awareness" about "me"—is actually me. So everything begins with awareness.

With awareness and awakening, we can perceive and understand the energy within us.

Where does energy come from? Is inner energy limitless? Why do we often feel a lack of energy? Why do we become depressed?

Both of these individuals are undoubtedly people whose boundless inner energy has been unleashed.

Bill Campbell is "the behind-the-scenes hero and secret weapon who single-handedly created the miracle of Silicon Valley" — this is the consensus among these "extraordinary individuals." Without him, without his weekly walks and conversations with people like Jobs and Schmidt, they would not have become such outstanding leaders, built such exceptional organizations, achieved such great endeavors, and ultimately contributed to the remarkable miracle of Silicon Valley.

Alex Honnold faces an even greater challenge, a life-or-death struggle hanging by a thread: harsh natural conditions and the consequence of a single small mistake in a split second leading to a fatal fall. Physical strength goes without saying, but he also needs astonishing focus, unwavering concentration, and the unity of mind and body—only then is any of this possible.

Yet their ability to accomplish such seemingly unimaginable, miraculous feats all demonstrates that a person's inner energy can be limitless.

Where does inner energy come from? If we live a restricted life, what is it that blocks the release of this inner energy? How can we break through these barriers to attain freedom? And how can we let this freedom guide our engagement with the world?

The book *The Untethered Soul* raises these questions step by step and then answers them. If you can understand it, you will realize that these explanations actually cover everything about life, including these two astonishing stories.

If I were to summarize, ultimate success can take countless external forms, but internally, there is only one path to success: "living without fear."

I think what most people consider success is having financial security and social status, essentially being famous and wealthy.

There's no problem with having these, and there's no problem with wanting these either. The issue is that all these things are external—they may be yours today, but they might not be tomorrow.

If our "success" lies in "possessing," then we are inevitably afraid of "losing."

If we or our children achieve a life of "fame and fortune" and consider this the essence and definition of success, then because these things can be "lost" at any moment, we are inevitably trapped in a daily existence of anxiety, suspicion, and fear. When we don’t have them, we worry: Why don’t we have them? When will we finally attain them? Once we have them, we fear losing them—either feeling inadequate ourselves or doubting others. Every day is spent worrying about tomorrow.

In fact, this is not merely an "assumption," but rather the true inner state of most people.

Therefore, defining success as something external means we will forever be in one of two states: chasing or escaping, regretting the past or worrying about the future. We are never truly in the present.

Why are we anxious about our children's education? The underlying reason is also fear.

Fearful that their child might "fall behind," they run and chase every day, filling in gaps here and there, utterly exhausted. In the end, it may seem like the child has "learned" a lot, but we haven't actually "caught up" to anything. We're merely running to escape the fear within.

We thought as long as we ran fast enough, we could leave fear behind.

But your fear is always with you.

I once invited a guest for a conversation, Andy Puddicombe, the founder of Headspace (a globally popular meditation app). His life journey is quite extraordinary: he practiced gymnastics as a child, studied sports in college, dropped out at the age of 22, traveled the world, and later spent ten years as a monk in Bhutan and India. After a decade, he returned to the United States and founded Headspace, which now has 300 employees and is a highly successful tech company.

When he talked about his own experiences, he said that in his early twenties, he went through trauma, including witnessing the death of a close friend in a car accident. As a result, he dropped out of school and tried to escape. At that time, he decided to go abroad, hoping to get as far away from home as possible and leave these troubles behind. But later, he realized that it was impossible to escape them—"your troubles will always follow you." In the end, he found that the only thing he could do was face them.

Alex said the same thing. Actually, he had wanted to climb El Capitan for a long time and had prepared for eight years. He said that every time he looked at this massive, smooth marble wall at the foot of the mountain, he felt fear. But later, he realized: I have no choice but to face this fear.

There's a very interesting detail here. The researchers performed an MRI scan on Alex's brain to see what was different about it. For most of us, when we see something that frightens us, the amygdala in our brain—the almond-shaped structure—gets activated. This is the most primitive, or animalistic, part of our brain.

When animals or primitive humans see a wild beast, this part of the brain makes us tense up immediately, triggering an emergency response and putting us into a "fight or flight" state. This is an instinctive protective mechanism we have when facing threats.

This test involves showing participants images designed to activate the amygdala response and observing their reactions through brain MRI. The results revealed that when Alex viewed these images, his amygdala showed no activation at all. In other words, after years of directly confronting fear, he has truly achieved a state of "fearlessness" and entered a deep state of calm.

In his weekly conversations with these "big shots," Bill would also ask: What are you afraid of deep down? Why? Once you know what you're afraid of, how do you face it?

Actually, there is a way. It's through introspection, meditation, and feeling where the fear lies. Once you sense it, instead of avoiding it, face it head-on and experience it. This process isn't easy, but if you never start, you'll never achieve true inner peace.

So success is not about possession, but about having no fear in your heart.

Because there is no fear within, everything can be created.

Nothing external truly belongs to us. In the mundane world, I believe the most important thing for all mortals is money. But what is money? It is merely an equivalent and a tool needed for the exchange of value. If one possesses value, why worry about money? To pursue money without seeking inner value is like buying the box and returning the pearl.

So the most important thing is your own sense of inner worth.

So you see, both Bill Campbell and Alex Honnold, by external standards, are considered "top-tier" talents. How did they become such individuals? It boils down to two points:

First, having "talent" — one's own innate gifts.

They can all be considered exceptionally talented individuals, but in truth, so are you, so is your child, and so is every one of us. It’s not that they possess some extraordinary gift that ordinary people lack, making them superhumans who succeed effortlessly. If you read their stories, you’ll find that they all come from "ordinary" families—Alex’s background is even more "humble," with divorced parents and a childhood marked by social isolation. Throughout their growth, they experienced the same fears, setbacks, and failures as we do. And every external "achievement" we see today was shaped through countless hours of practice and numerous failures.

Talent is something that everyone possesses. As the Buddha said, "Inherent nature is complete," which is precisely what this means.

Everyone is sitting on their own immense gold mine. Recognizing the existence of this "gold mine" is the first step.

Second, let the gold shine. This is the most difficult part.

Although everyone possesses this gold mine within themselves, most people never spend their lives digging into this inner treasure. Instead, they constantly seek externally, failing to find what they desire and ending their lives in frustration and discontent. Thus, "sitting on a gold mine yet dying poor" might very well be the state of most people.

Why is that? Because making "gold shine" is actually extremely difficult—it's a lifelong endeavor. On this gold mine, layer upon layer of thick, hard rock has been piled. These layers of rock were built up one by one during our growth. Sometimes they become so thick that we feel as if we’re living our entire lives on the barren, saline-alkali soil above the rock layers.

What are these layers of rock? They are fear and the various psychological patterns that arise from it: lack of self-confidence, distrust of others, worry, anxiety, and the stories and movies we construct internally from these. Most of us are deeply entangled in these stories, forgetting that we are the ones who wrote them.

If you want gold to shine, you must do the inner work to break down and melt these rocks. The thicker the layers of rock we accumulate during childhood and growth, the more challenging and difficult this work becomes. Why do people become depressed? It is precisely because the layers of rock are too thick, completely blocking the inner energy and light. As a result, the entire inner world becomes dim and cold.

Why am I so fixated on education? It's because deep down, you know that every child has this goldmine within them. Yet, when you look around, so much of what we call education — whether it's schools, parents, or societal expectations — spends most of its time piling layers of stones on top of that goldmine.

Why do so many university students suffer from "emptiness syndrome"? Why do top graduates from cram-school-style education harbor such resentment toward their schools? It is not the fault of these children. From early childhood, parents and schools have been piling stones upon them, all the way until high school graduation. These children grow up without a sense of security, "learning" in an environment filled with anxiety and fear of competition and elimination. On the surface, these children may seem "detestable," but in reality, they are deeply pitiable. They are left to grope in the dark, without light or guidance, often resorting to destructive behaviors as their only means of expression.

If we take a step back and look at the whole person, where is the education in centralized cultivation? It is a large-scale, organized harm inflicted upon children. Moreover, it is not only the schools that perpetrate this harm; parents are often accomplices as well. After more than a decade of this, to be honest, it is already a miracle that children survive without resorting to suicide. With no inner light, how can they not become hollow? With no inner light, where does happiness in life come from? If they cannot live happily themselves, how can they contribute to society?

When we talk about innovation, Bill Campbell, mentioned earlier, coached what could be considered some of the world's most innovative companies. What was his approach? It was actually very clear: to help the leaders of these companies become whole individuals. Once the inner gold mine is unearthed, it can unleash boundless energy to lead teams, organizations, and industries, creating miracles.

Therefore, true innovation ultimately relies not on intelligence or achievements, but on mental fortitude. An education system that undermines this fortitude and fosters arrogance is completely at odds with the goals of national development and innovation. If we continue to charge ahead in the wrong direction, prioritizing flashy external metrics and so-called technological advancements over the human element, and if this trend expands further, the consequences will be unimaginable.

For those with too many internal rocks, there are only two possibilities: self-harm or harming others. Self-harm is already occurring on a large scale—depression and mental health issues have become widespread social problems. Cases of harming others are also too numerous to count. Ultimately, why is there so much hostility in society? Because there is hostility within each person's heart. For society to move toward goodness, it must begin with each individual having light within their hearts.

But in the end, I remain optimistic because everyone's heart yearns for the light. And once you experience the warmth and strength that this light brings, you won’t want to turn back. So I believe hope lies in more of us discovering the light within ourselves—and all of this begins with awareness, with awakening.

I recommend everyone read the book *The Untethered Soul*, which is included in the recommended reading list of the Nuoyan community.

The fundamental intention of the Promise Community is to become a community of awakened individuals. To friends who wish to join us, I welcome you to the community.

In fact, ultimate success is not about perfection.

None of us are; what we do isn't either; a child's growth won't be, and cannot be.

So, for parents who pursue the perfect experience for their children and want to leave nothing out, it might be worth asking:

What are you afraid of deep down?

Why?

If you have the answer,

Next question, why is this the answer?

What are you afraid of?

Why?

When you reach the fifth layer of questioning, perhaps that will be the beginning of your awakening.

I hope more of you will embark on this journey.

Here is the full video of my interview with Michael Singer mentioned at the beginning of the article: