Week 4 – Well Trained for Failure

Now, there’s an uncomfortable concept — I am well trained to fail?  Let’s see.  I procrastinate — I let myself get distracted — I give up on something, whether it’s a resolution or a plan — check, check, check.  And how many times have I engaged in those habits?  Oops, I WAS training myself for failure.  These activities don’t get me to my goals.  They don’t really increase my level of happiness.  And they sure don’t make anyone else who’s involved happy either.

Once I set a goal, I need to focus on it and get ‘er done.  So how?  Well, we have to retrain ourselves (our subconscious which makes all the decisions) to complete, to finish, to live the dreams we truly want.

There’s a lot of training that just can’t have poor outcomes.  The training has to be effective and relevant.  Like training for military operations, or emergency services.  So who’s training our brain?  Isn’t that up to us as individuals?  Or are we allowing others to feed our brains with information and activities that don’t really improve our lives?  We have great coaches available who can tell us what we should do.  Still WE have to go do it!  Haanel writes, “modern psychology tells us that when we start something and do not complete it, or make a resolution and do not keep it, we are forming the habit of failure; absolute, ignominious failure.  If you do not intend to do a thing, do not start; if you do start, see it through even if the heavens fall; if you make up your mind to do something, do it; let nothing, no one, interfere.” (1-12)

Yikes!  That sounds serious.  And I don’t recall a lesson coming at me quite that hard during my formal education. So how do I turn that around?  After all, 95% of us are engaged in procrastination about 20% of our time, according to Brandon Gaille of Gaille media.

Well, I thank my lucky stars that I was fortunate to receive a paid scholarship to the Master Key Experience course where I found extremely helpful and practical coaching to create the life I really want.  Here’s a short version of an exercise Mark J gives in the class to help us train our brains for success and adopt habits to tackle Haanel’s principle above:

Think, Write, Promise and Do.  First we must approach our daily activity, our lives, with intentional thought.  Think about what we want and what we need to do to get it.  Then we write.  Writing our goals down, writing our plans down, writing a commitment in our calendar, all help integrate our desires more deeply, intensifying the commitment.  Then we really commit to the action.  We promise ourselves, we promise our clients, our partners, our co-workers, our families, that we will get this activity completed.  We increase our accountability factor or build a mastermind to help.  Then, finally, we actually do it.  Hooray.  Now, we can celebrate. Read back through our commitment, calendar, plan, and see how we are training ourselves to go after and get what we want.  You’ll find cause to celebrate!  We just did one key step.  And now, just as in any skill, we must practice successful actions so that they sink into our subconscious and we don’t have to consciously worry about it anymore.  Success comes automatically.  He encourages us to think about a chore to complete each week, write it on a card, put a completion target date on it, read it every day 3 x a day, then make sure we do it!  All because of the simple daily task that I think about and choose to do, now I’m retraining my subconscious.  Yes, I AM successful.  I DO complete what I set out to do.  Simple process, based on my goals – think, write, promise and do.

“If you carry out this idea, beginning with small things which you know you can control and gradually increase the effort, but never under any circumstances allowing your ‘I’ to be overruled, you will find that you can eventually control yourself, and many men and women have found to their sorrow that it is easier to control a kingdom than to control themselves,” Haanel, the Master Key System (1-13).

Like I said, some training just can’t afford not to be effective.  Nor can I afford for the trainer to be ineffective.  We only have this one life to be who we are.  So why aren’t we getting the best out of it?  I’m going back to my trainer (me, and my subconscious) and demand better results.  I want a life of dreams lived, not quiet desperation.  I’m training myself for success – Think, Write, Promise, Do! And celebrate as I succeed.  “Subby, listen up!!”