Nov 23 2019

Beware Failure After Success

From the record of history, many successful people failed after success because of their proudness. Especially we can learn from the book of the Romance of Three Kingdom in which two great leaders failed because of that they were too proud after their success.
One person was Cao Cao. In the book he was described as an evil man, but actually he was a man of great military talent. He started a small group of people from his own native country, but later he organized an army of two hundred thousand men. With his talent, he defeated his enemy who had an army of seven hundred thousand. Then he controlled two third of China. There was still a small landlord of Sun Quan who controlled south part of Yangtse River with an army of fifty thousand. At that time, Cao was so proud that his army of eight hundred thousand could easily defeat the small army of fifty thousand. But the result was contrary, Cao was defeated by Sun Quan and his dream of uniting China was smashed.
Another person was Liu Bei who started with a small group of people, assisted by Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhuge Liang, and finally occupied whole Sichuan. He began to be proud as Sun Quan attacked Guan Yu territory and Guan Yu was killed. Liu Bei, against all advise of his minsters, he led his army of seven hundred thousand to attack Sun Quan who had only a small army of one hundred thousand, but he was defeated, with a total loss of seven hundred thousand young soldiers.