Productivity Help – 3 Surefire ways to Fail Every Single Time
I know, I know. The title of this article is, well, weird, to say the least. After all, who in their right mind would want to fail? Well, the simple truth is the Internet is filled with ‘Top 10’ lists of ‘how to succeed’, ‘how to reach your fullest potential,’ and similar topics.
All such content try to teach you how to achieve peak performance and enjoy optimal results by appealing to your proactive side. That’s right-they appeal to the part of your mind that is driven by desire, passion, and motivated by hopes and dreams. Put simply, they work on the positive side of your brain. The problem with such an approach is that, for the most part, all of us aren’t always positive and proactive. In fact, in many situations, we would only make a move if our backs are against the wall. All the positive talk in the world won’t get us to take action until and unless the chips are down. Welcome to the reactive side of the human mind. Interestingly enough, when it comes to getting results and getting things done, a reactive or negative approach works better than a proactive or positive approach. This article appeals to the reactive part of your mind. Forget your hopes and dreams for a moment and focus on the following mindsets and how they result in you failing time after time. Learn to recognize these and work around them so you can start getting the optimal results you want.
Failure Method #1: Failing to fully believe in what you’re doing
People who fail to achieve their goals often fail because they sabotage themselves. They don’t really fully believe in what they’re doing. In many cases, they doubt what they’re doing and are simply just going through the motions. In the back of their minds, they give themselves an ‘out.’ They think of alternative things or alternative solutions they could be trying. They often feel they are just doing something that’s ‘second best’ or ‘better than nothing.
If you think thoughts that erode your faith in what you’re doing, you are never going to succeed. Success requires focus at all levels-physical, mental, and emotional. After all, where your full focus goes, your full energy flows. When you are ‘keeping your options open’ by constantly thinking of alternatives as you work on something, you fail to give it your all. Your heart just isn’t fully in it.
Don’t be surprised if things don’t pan out. You weren’t into it all the way and things have a way of falling apart due to your lack of faith. How do you fix this very common problem? Simple. Burn your ships behind you. Don’t give yourself an out. Don’t give yourself an alternative. Tell yourself that you either succeed with this particular project or you fail miserably. Commit one hundred percent. Focus your energy on making whatever it is you’re doing succeed. This means engaging our creativity and imagination to solve whatever problems arise. You can’t do this when you’re double-minded or fuzzy about your goal.
Failure Method #2: Confusing ‘Analysis’ with action
Thinking about something is not the same as doing something. This seems like common sense to most people but you’d be surprised as to how many people confuse the two. They think that as long as they buy a book or educational materials about an opportunity or project and read it, they are ‘doing’ something. Absolutely wrong.
Getting information is great. Doing your due diligence is not just important it is crucial. Making sure you have enough information to make an informed decision is not just smart, it is vital. With that said, you need to reach a point where you pull the trigger.
You have to make a decision and commit.
Sadly, too many people are afraid of this so they ‘comfort’ themselves about the risk they’ll be undertaking by getting more and more information. It never ends. Why? You can never get enough information. There is just no way you can be fully assured that you all the information about your decision.
Sadly, ‘analysis paralysis’ leads to failure. Every single time. As Wayne Gretzy said, you miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take. If you try to overcome the fear you have about the risks of a particular project by continuously researching and researching, you’ll never get to the point where you realize you have ‘enough’ information to take the plunge. Why? You’re ‘researching’ not because you’re looking for an answer. You’re digging for information and ‘analyzing’ because you’re afraid of making a decision and committing yourself. The solution to analysis paralysis is simple: lay out all your questions about the decision you’re trying to make. Once you find information that answers the questions, no matter how barely, decide you have ENOUGH information and commit. Listen, there is no assurance that you’ll succeed. You have to reach a point where you feel you have enough information to make an informed decision. As long as your decision is informed, that’s enough.
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Failure Method #3: Focusing on the destination instead of the journey
Success is a process. It is a journey that involves lots of twists, turns, and even outright detours. If you view success as a fixed destination, it will be too easy for you to get demotivated and burn out. How come? You have a fixed picture of what success should look like. If the results you’re getting don’t square up with that picture, you end up thinking you’re wasting your time. If you continue get results that don’t look like the results you have in your head, you end up giving up. That’s the worst thing you can do since the only way to lose is to quit. If you don’t give up, you’re still in the game. Clear?
Instead of defining success as the outcome at the end of a process, measure success based on where you are in the process of achieving your goals. For example, if your goal is to make money online by blogging, your measure of success when starting your blog is to successfully get your blog up. This means you allow yourself to feel good when you’ve completed your blog setup and have the look and feel you’re looking for. Next, when you have started writing your blog posts, your measurement of success should be whether the posts you write are high quality materials or not. Once your posts reach your quality standards, your next measurement of success should be on how engaging they are as measured by the comments they get. So on and so forth. Eventually, your measure of success would be how much money your blog makes. Now, if you were to start the process by immediately measuring your blog’s success based on income when you’re still building up your blog, you are setting yourself up for failure. You’ll lose heart and give up quickly. Why? It’s completely unrealistic to expect revenues at this point! Make sure your measure of success changes based on where you are in the process. If you focus solely on the ultimate result or goal of your project, you’ll quickly lose your resolve and will find it too tempting to quit. Whether they are trying to lose weight, find someone new, get a new job, switch careers, or make money, using the wrong success metric is one of the most common reasons why people fail.
Keep the three ways to fail above in mind when working on your goals. Make sure your don’t consciously or subconsciously subscribe to these methods. You are always in control of what you choose to think about. Start thinking in a way that leads to success instead of failure and disappointment.