I mean the Large Hadron Collider will either create a massive black hole to destroy the earth or it won’t.
Oh! I mean you are either a success or a failure.
No way known to man that you are either a success or a failure.
I know I spent a lot of time dealing with this idea. I wasn’t successful so I was a failure. I can over simplify things – Pobody is Nerfect.
With time and perspective I can see how limiting that belief is. However, when it is an omnipresent demon in your head, it isn’t helpful at all.
I spent the best part of a decade dealing with those demons. I don’t know where they came from, how they got there, but they were there. Gnawing away at my confidence, my ability and my effectiveness every day.
The downside of a good memory is the ability to replay every failure in your life over and over again, from a missed tackle in a hockey grand final that cost us the premiership to every time I botched a sale. I can recall them all with enough accuracy to bring my mood down.
For a long time, a part of my mind decided that they should be on a continuous loop. Not exactly the positive thinking material we are all told to focus on if we want to be successful.
In the end what got me through was the following realisation. Possibly from Dr Glenn Livingston for the sake of attributing it to someone.
Success is more like a process of removing anchors. If you are held in place by even a single anchor then you won’t make much progress quickly, especially in the eyes of an outside observer. However, you are making massive progress every time you remove an anchor.
Most importantly you won’t move freely until all the anchors are up.
One less anchor, holding you in place means you are a step closer to success. Once they are all removed then you have the happiest thing you could possibly want – largely unmitigated success the rest of your life.
“Life isn’t fair,” we all have a different anchors, and different numbers of anchors holding us in place. There are things holding us in place that aren’t a problem for others, and some people never seem to have had any problems. Our main task in life is to remove those anchors. Most people don’t, they remain anchored in place their entire life.
I know pulling up even one anchor is hard, dirty work. And if there is no breaking free then there isn’t reward either. The good news is once you are free, it is an incredible feeling.
The sooner you start to enjoy the process the easier it is. And how you feel about the task is actually entirely up to you – it’s just another anchor to pull up.