Remove Your Salieri’s

Ever notice people who somehow manage to make you feel worthless and miserable after interacting with them? 

I call them Salieri’s.

The name comes from the 1984 movie Amadeus. In the movie, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a remarkably talented young Viennese composer who unwittingly finds a fierce rival in the disciplined and determined Antonio Salieri, the Court Composer to the Emperor of Austria.

Salieri is portrayed in the movie as the only one who truly understands Mozart’s genius, and that Mozart’s talents are from God himself. To Mozart’s face, Salieri is pleasant and supportive. But behind Mozart’s back, Salieri is doing all he can to sabotage and ruin Mozart.

Salieri is jealous of Mozart, but his problem is deeper than that; he’s mad at God himself for denying him the same level of talent as Mozart, and he is even more enraged because he believes God made him the only person on earth with the ability to recognize Mozart’s genius. To satisfy his hate, he plots to kill Mozart as a way to strike back at God.

That’s a Salieri. An angry, bitter person who is determined to make your life as miserable as theirs.

You will encounter a great many Salieri’s in your lifetime. They can be family members, co-workers, peers, neighbors, even clients. Like Mozart, you may have a difficult time recognizing them. The main thing to remember is that if you come away from every interaction with a person feeling like shit, it could be that you have a Salieri on your hands.

Remember that the better you are doing, the more the Salieri’s will come after you. It’s also very important to never share your big goals in life and business with a Salieri. A Salieri will do all they can do deny you your hopes and aspirations.

When you think you are dealing with a Salieri, remember it could just be a rough patch that a person is going through, so a little empathy at first may be in order.

But when you’re sure someone is a Salieri, be ruthless about staying away from them. Your first option is to limit interactions with them. Be pleasant when you have no choice but to be around them. But under no circumstance should you share your goals with them.

When it’s an extreme case where your Salieri is dragging you down on every encounter, and affecting your ambition to go after your big goals, your only choice is is to cleanly, clearly, and totally cut them out of your life. No contact what so ever. I know it seems severe, but if you want to continue to grow, to learn, and to be happy, your Salieri’s must be removed. There is no reason to feel bad or guilty about it. It’s a matter of survival.

To reach your big goals, you need positive and supportive people around as much as possible. To make room for supportive people, you need to eliminate the Salieri’s.

When you share your goals with positive, supportive people, the energy you get from that is pure gold. That energy makes you want to give right back and be a positive force in that person’s life, and others. It becomes a support loop that gets bigger with each success from each person in the loop.

A Salieri sucks that energy out of you and pisses it down the drain. Life is short and if your goals are big enough, you won’t have the time or energy to deal with them – so don’t to it.

Remove your Salieri’s.