To follow up on my previous two articles regarding exponential learning and peak performances and why they are developed skills, I promised to address one issue that we human beings are generally pretty lousy at.
I think when you start recognizing this tendency within yourself, you will set free a huge piece of what is restricting you from living your dreams.
Two emails we received in the last weeks serve as a perfect example.
1)A person who just joined The Singing Zone wrote: “I’ve tried to log in 20 times and it’s not working. I give up. Give me a refund.” 2)A second person who was 64 years old wrote that he had been in the choir in school but had been told to be quiet and had never sung since.
I have full compassion for that frustration when things don’t work out they way we expect them to and the emotional trauma from bad experiences (and as kids we are very susceptible to what people say). Interestingly enough, during the time period the first person tried to log in, hundreds of other members successfully logged in. So why didn’t it work for her? Well, that is of course what my support staff is here to help with, but this person never sought any help.
The second person’s reason for giving up because someone else said something is exceptionally common.
Both of these people gave up. They never turned the “failure” into a success, and, instead, their learning experience was to never do it again.
I’d like to suggest that, in general, we human beings give up far too easily, and therefore have negative (erroneous) learning experiences.
Let’s turn back to the example of my son’s baseball experience (read it here if you haven’t). Should he have given up after having missed a couple of throws? If so, should he have walked away saying “never again”?
That would have been ludicrous. If so, he would have been deprived of the opportunity to experience success. And that is exactly what happens to so many.
Success can never be experienced unless we understand that challenges are prerequisites.
It is BECAUSE we have been made fun of, made fools out of ourselves, been treated badly, had numerous bad experiences, been rejected over and over again, that we develop the fabric that creates success and happiness… but only IF we learn that turning failure into success is a developed skill. It is more than a mindset. It also takes training to develop.
So here’s my question? Do you ever say: “I don’t do that.”? Is there something that you stopped doing because of a bad experience? Most of the time we are not even aware of why we believe what we believe, because we have justified it so well.
One person told us “I don’t order online”, someone else says “I’ve been scammed before”. Others say “I have no talent” before having trained one minute of their lives. Many times the fears and beliefs are not even based on past experiences, but on something they have been told.
So what if we’ve been scammed and cheated? Is that going to stop you from experiencing the good things in life? Is watching a bad movie going to stop me from watching a good one? So what if I’ve you’ve been humiliated. Welcome to the club. Is that going to stop you from experiencing joy and love?
Now having said this, realize that success does NOT come from just doing the same thing over and over. Successful people ADJUST. Trying to log in 20 times the same way without adjusting or asking for help is indeed setting yourself up for failure. My son didn’t just keep throwing, hoping the ball would finally hit it’s target. He is trained to adjust. He adjusts his focus, energy, balance, breathing, mindset, whatever is needed…
Being able to do that better and better is part of what we call learning and that comes from training.
As you know from your own successes, and what anyone of you role models will tell you, there is never ever a straight line to success. We always need to adjust. This is also why it is so crucial that we study the mindset of our role models.
Feel free to share what “bad experience” has held you back and what you are doing about it, or a success story of how you turned failure into success, or something else that comes to mind when you read this.
