Mind-Fail

I can't be convinced otherwise; at least 50% of all failure comes from our own mental programming. From adolescence-forward, we're loaded down with beliefs innocently handed us by a long list of influences: parents, educators, and peers to name a few. It's so much easier lying awake in the small hours, ruminating over our mistakes and shortfalls. "Negative Resignation" short-stops success -- it's the banana peel of everyday coexistence with people and their challenges. Here are a few classics; I've heard most of them expressed and witnessed them in practicum. See if any sound at all familiar...

• Stress over what to wear to a big meeting or an event, minimizing your enjoyment.
• Procrastinate under the guise of "better preparation."
• Join a committee but avoid leadership.
• Start "joint studies" instead of taking singular action on potential.
• Engage in excessive social networking under the false belief everyone will like you more.
• When hit with a colleague's good idea, shoot it down just to balance your self-esteem.
• Be critical of someone's great concept so that you won't need to adapt to it next week.
• Wait for the day to end; tomorrow might be better.
• Stay on the endless bubble of the next big trend; instead of actualizing a current plan.
• Labor under the myth that only the gifted and purely talented really "have it."
• Tell yourself you don't.
• Give-in to anxiety over problems that don't yet exist. My Dad the coach once quipped, "Well, if 10 troubles are coming down the road to meet you, nine of them will never get there!"

The mind is amazing. Roy Disney once reminded me of his uncle's favorite incantation: "If you can dream it, you can do it." I know ... you've heard it a hundred times. With great respect for my esteemed former boss, turn it five degrees and restate it as follows: "If I vividly and repeatedly picture myself achieving it, I probably will."

Self-visualization is not frippery from pop-psychology videos, it's a real process. Athletes, fighter pilots, prisoners of war, CEOs and innovators absent two nickels to spare, have proven we can change, we can see our way into success, and we can learn to raise our self-deserve level for a far more productive life.

It's not how good you are, it's how good you believe you can be.