Despite having an unlimited amount of wants, many times we fall short. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. We need to be very careful of placing blame on either of two extremes. One is the world. While you can’t change how other people will respond to you, you can change how you respond to them. If you talk to a hundred clients, and they all say “no,” it’s easy to blame the market, or blame the product or blame anything other than your own behaviors. However, since there is nothing you can ever do to change the market, or the weather or the time or country in which you live, or your genetics, or any of the other million ready-made excuses, avoid doing this at all costs. Unless you are willing to choose to act in the presence of things you simply cannot control, it will be very difficult to create the life you want. However, the other end of the spectrum is just as debilitating. And that is the feeling that you are a failure, you are somehow deficient, and you will never be as successful as you see those around you.
Always Doing the Best You Can
Just as every human has programmed into them an unlimited amount of wants and desires, we all have programmed into us the ability to always act in our own best interests. However, there are two things that can always be improved upon, no matter if you’re the smartest person in the world with decades of practice, or are just getting started out. And those two limitations and they will always be limitations, are your skill levels, and your understanding of your environment. You will always do the very best that you can, to get the most for your actions, based on your skills, and your understanding of the situation. Since most of the time you will be operating within a world that is dependent on the ever changing decisions of others, you will necessarily never have complete understanding of what is going on. The best salespeople only sell a few percent of their clients. Few professional best baseball players consistently bat over 350.
Reasons for Failure
If we define failure as not getting what you wanted, then the reasons are simple. Either you didn’t understand the situation well enough, or you don’t have enough skills to get what you wanted. Remember, even if you fail, you get to learn more about the system in which you are operating. And keep in mind that when we see every action within the context of our larger goals, even a failure, if we learn something about the system, will eventually be looked upon as a success. Imagine a sharpshooter with a new rifle. They will necessarily need to have a few misses so they can properly adjust their sights. If they hit nothing but bullseyes the first time, they’ll learn nothing. If you get lucky in chess and beat a much stronger opponent, this is called a “Fool’s Mate.” You may trick yourself into thinking you are much better than you are, which may set up you up for failure later on. Even championship teams lose several times during the year. Few bowlers ever achieve 300. In the natural course of your life, every failure is simply more information that will help you learn more about the system, to help you do better next time. So long as you take consistent action toward your goal, every action, failure or success, is ultimately a success in the bigger picture.
Parts Theory
However, sometimes there are deeper issues that keep us stuck. We keep trying and trying, and never seem to get any better. This is when we need to take a step back and see what’s going on. In NLP, there is a theory, or more appropriately a metaphor, that we are made up of “parts.” Part of you wants to go out, part of you wants to stay home and watch TV. When two parts of you are in conflict, it will be hard to perform effectively. If part of you wants to give a speech, but part of you wants to hide under the table, you’ll have problems if both parts are of equal size. They’ll even be more problems if you fail to acknowledge the part that wants to you to stay where you are. This is the heart of self- sabotage.
Self-Sabotage
Perhaps you’ve had this experience. You want to achieve something. You get started, and you are really making progress. But then something happens, everything blows up, and you end up worse off than when you started. Diets are notorious for this. Why does this happen? This is because one part wants to move forward while another part wants to stay back. In the beginning, the part that wants to stay back doesn’t really mind that much. But the closer you get, the more nervous that part becomes. Once you start getting really close, that parts starts to really freak out until it finally throws a monkey wrench in the whole process. How do you keep this from happening? By taking a look at absolutely everything that will happen when you move forward toward your goal.
Four Quadrants
No matter what you want to achieve, you will necessarily consider your present state and your future state. And the future state has good things, and bad things. Your present state has good things and bad things. So long as you fully understand all four of these, you’ll have no problems achieving any goal. Self-sabotage happens when you have some present positives about your current state that you aren’t aware of. The more you move away from your present state to your goal state or future state, these present positive starts to vanish. If you don’t take time to acknowledge these, you’ll mess up halfway there, so you can hang on to these present positives. The other case is when you have future negatives that you haven’t fully considered. The closer you get to your goal state or future state, the bigger these future negatives will get until you mess up, so they don’t come true.
A common example is any fear of success where success will bring more public or social attention. You may want to become a famous singer, but once you start to realize how scary it is to be recognized everywhere you go, you start to freak out and mess up. Losing weight is another example. Eating food is a really good way to reduce stress. So if you suddenly start to lose weight without coming up with another way to reduce stress on a regular basis, it will build up until you snap.
In order to make sure this doesn’t happen, make sure to take plenty of time and consider all four quadrants before starting any long range goal. Present positives, present negatives, future positives, and future negatives.
Exercises
Think of any goal you’d like to achieve and write it down. Then take time to write out as many things in each of the four quadrants as you can. Give yourself a few days to a week for big goals.
Desired Goal
- Present Positives (Things you like about your current state – things you’d like to keep)
- Present Negatives (Things you’d like to change about your present state- things you’d like to get rid of)
- Future Positives (Positive things in your future you’re hoping to create)
- Future Negatives (Negative things in your future that you’ll have to deal with)
