Success? Failure? – I Don’t Buy Either

Working through my archive material I came across some training that changed the way I look at everything in my business and personal life completely.

Many years ago I got some excellent training from Jeff Paul on the subject of ‘Accurate Thinking’.

Jeff explained that the concept wasn’t his (it originated in Napoleon Hill’s Think & Grow Rich) and I’m not claiming it as my idea either.

This concept of Accurate Thinking has the power to change our lives in ways that the majority of us simply don’t realize.

There are many things that we as humans don’t think very accurately about and one that has a profound impact on every area of our lives is the concept of success and failure.

Failure

We are brought up to look upon failure as a bad or negative thing to be avoided at all costs. We become embarrassed when we ‘fail’ and try to keep it to ourselves.

What about success

When things go as we would like them to go we are conditioned to feel that we achieved something extra-ordinary. That we are right to feel proud, some people even go to extremes feeling somehow superior to their fellow humans beings.

Both of those outcomes are conditioned responses to a situation and totally wrong.

Let’s consider for a moment these ideas of success or failure. Does it really mean that when things don’t go the way we would like that we have failed in some way?

Equally, when things go the way we wanted does that mean we should puff our chest out and proclaim how smart we are?

No – on either count.

Jeff explained, and I agree, that in those respects success and failure don’t exist. Thinking of things in terms of success (good) or failure (bad) has a major impact on how we feel about things and in turn on the quality of our lives and how we do in business.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

Imagine that you just sent out a mailing to your list and very few people opened your email and nobody bought your offer,

If you think of that as a failure, which most people would, it has a very negative impact on the way you think about your business.

It can make you feel demoralized, disheartened and even cause you to give up even trying again. And this doesn’t only apply to our business lives, it applies to everything we do.

Similarly, when things go well we see ourselves as successful, smart even.

Results

The fact is neither of those is true. We didn’t get success or failure. All we got were results.

That’s it. All we got were results. Sometimes we get good results and sometimes we get bad results but either way they are just results.

Everything we do in life is just a test whether that’s chatting up someone for a first date, going through an interview for a job or writing a sales letter.

They are all just tests. We test an approach and if it works hopefully we do more of it and if it doesn’t we try a different approach.

As business owners, if we think of everything we do as a test and not something that we may succeed or fail at we see things in a very different light.

We remain positive and forward looking. We learn from the things that we try, tweak them and try again.

Thomas Edison

I remember the story of Thomas Edison who was conducting experiments to perfect the electric light bulb.

After one more experiment that didn’t work a young reporter approached him and said, “Mr Edison, why do you persist trying these things out only to fail and look silly in front of all the observers?”.

To which Thomas Edison replied, “Son, you clearly don’t understand how the world works. You see I haven’t failed at all, I have just identified several ways that don’t work. That puts me those many ways closer to the way that will work.”

He understood the concept of things we do as being just tests.

This is just one aspect of Accurate Thinking. Once we begin to think in a much more accurate manner in everything we do our lives change beyond recognition.

We eliminate many of the roadblocks that hold us back and start to experience the results that we want in our lives.

If you have any questions shoot me an email to trevor@trevor@trevor-greenfield.com. Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts.

Until next time,

Kind regards,

P.S. Make sure to check out my blog from time to time for more help and advice to speed your online journey to success.

P.P.S. Go check out this training now;

>> How To Create Products That Sell <<

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