Hernacki discusses the wrong definition many people have of “failure” and innocently using how that wrong definition holds them back from succeeding. He explains how we can start out with a goal and as we progress or don’t on the road to success, we start changing the goal and therefore the definition of success:
Many people simply define “failure” incorrectly. They have a goal, but they don’t take the first step out of the fear that it is the only step they take and determines whether they succeeded or failed.
Hernacki corrects this thinking by stating failure is either not trying or giving up after trying too few times.
He gives some examples of people who call into radio stations when he was when on his book tour. They told him they needed things. He asked one woman who was unemployed but afraid to take a job in a career, “What are the chances you’ll succeed in that job if you don’t take it?” The woman got the point.
He then gives an example of a woman trying to make it as an actress who holds down a day job while keeping her dream alive by continuously auditioning. He also adds he thinks she has no talent! Finally, Hernacki winds up this chapter by cautioning readers not to automatically declare the visible or material evidence of success as true success. He gives two contrasting examples:
- The first example: a saleswoman who’s a top performer, dresses very well, drives a fancy car with a fancy lease payment, owns a beautiful, wonderfully located and furnished condominium… but has a problem with maintaining relationships, whether friend or romantic
- The second example: a gardener living on the edge of poverty with no possessions, no savings, and a wife and five kids to feed. Yet he comes to a warm and loving home where his wife cooks delicious dinners and his kids crawl over with him with enthusiasm
In short, Hernacki uses the extremes of shallow material wealth combined with impoverished relationships compared to deep relationships combined with unstated fear of a downward spiral to the permanent bottom should anything happen to the gardener or his family.
Now for my comments:
1. Money/things/status symbols vs. relationships: A quick note on Hernacki’s shallow materialism vs. rich relationships:
It incorrectly leads many readers to the wrong conclusion. Here’s why, based on my personal experience of being wealthy and connected with many wealthy friends, some of whom are billionaires:
When you don’t have sufficient money, basic fears about food, clothing, and housing are always present gnawing in the background and sucking up your emotional and mental energy as stress. Don’t believe me? Ever been a day away from being evicted with nowhere to go and nowhere to put your stuff? How does that feel emotionally?
When you have sufficient money, basic fears about food, clothing, and housing are gone forever. Sure you can take your shallowness to higher material levels. But you’re not concerned about finding food or being evicted.
And regardless of how much you have, you will always have issues: personal and interpersonal. There are nice and nasty people at every level of wealth and social status.
2. Don’t be insane:
Hernacki is correct in discussing continuing until you succeed rather than giving it one try then quitting. But the one part he doesn’t include is reflecting on what doesn’t work and modifying your approach until it does work.
He merely hints at it by referring to Thomas Edison and his famous 1000 or more attempts to create the filament light who he says wasn’t discouraged because he found 1000 ways that didn’t work. It’s certainly inspiring to hear the great man didn’t give up. It’s more enlightening to understand how he modified his results. (I assume he kept very detailed record-keeping as a scientist so he wouldn’t repeat the 1000 ways that didn’t work.)
One definition of insanity is this: “Continuing to repeat the same behavior over and over expecting different results.” Perhaps some considered Edison insane.
Life is not tidy, clear-cut, and simple as the guidance you’re reading. So where does this definition of insanity work and where is it just a statement of limitation that will hold you back?
Which of these three is insane behavior?
Let’s look at the range of cases where you can continue to repeat the same behavior and your expectations:
1. When you can succeed mightily like Thomas Edison:
Sometimes you engage in the same behavior again and again and can reasonably expect better results over time. Such as when you practice anything, from music, sports, learning a language, business, in fact anything where you start clumsily from the beginning, understand the basics, and continue improving.
2. When you can do good to okay: you’re not gifted:
Sometimes you work at hard and do improve but only to a certain point. I don’t think it’s a limiting statement to say you’re great in certain things, good to okay in others, and there are a bunch of things where it’s probably better if you get someone to help you because you suck. I think it’s realistic and smart to recognize your gifts and talents and focus on them.
3. And when you will succeed only through uncontrollable luck: The powers that run the universe throw you an occasional bone: “the game is rigged against you:”
Sometimes you engage in the same behavior but fool yourself into thinking you will get better results over time. You can practice, thoughtfully evaluate and reflect on your progress, and go back to it to see if you can improve. But the game is rigged against you.
There are a couple of terms to describe this.
Psychologists call it “variable rate reinforcement” or “gambling behavior:” a positive result once in a while reinforces the behavior to continue the same behavior for long periods of time, such as shoving coins into a slot machine which is programmed to make the casino money by making all gamblers a group lose money. Your proper analysis and conclusion should include certain known facts: a casino is a business that makes tons of money by knowing the statistical odds of any game outcome, then paying out less than those odds. The game is rigged against you.
Others call it “magical thinking” and many fall prey to it in certain religious and spiritual practices… because they’ll use it to clear their inner negativity or blocks by applying surface-level pop psychology (as I’ve been discussing in this series on the Forgotten Secret to Phenomenal Success) in order to attract wealth or health or a romantic relationship using spiritual principles or laws that transcend the physical laws.
Followers usually focus on how the vibrational thoughts will attract what they want with little physical effort involved. (Personally, I agree that thoughts are things and powerful things at that. But we have bodies for a purpose, part of which is to take our thoughts and turn them into what we want, from ordering a pizza online and moving our bodies to open the front door 30 minutes later in oder to manifest our food through thought… to gathering investors, architects, and contractors to manifest a skyscraper that I see first only in my mind as a thought.)
But these “magical thinkers” ignore those important paragraphs telling them they need to interact with the world and it will take time in a job or business to get money, it will take exercise and eating healthy foods to regain their health, it will take 30 minutes for the pizza to get here, or it will take time in finding and interacting with other people to attract that special someone. Things take time in the physical universe; they don’t poof magically into existence. The game is rigged against you in the magical advice.
Again, after a careful, consistent application of the principles over time, your analysis should reveal: either markedly improved results rather than the luck, random statistical blip OR coincidence that is frequently called “synchronicity.” Heck, a broken clock is correct twice a day! The game is rigged against you.
Some multi-level marketing promoters and internet marketing gurus also use the “magical thinking” appeal by continuously offering a core group of products, each of which is supposedly the great breakthrough you’ve been waiting for to “attract” rivers of customers just dying to hand over their hard-earned money to you if you simply follow these easy, proven steps of their money-making machine! But of course you need to buy the product from the promoters and gurus, many of which are overpriced for the value delivered. The game is rigged against you.
Also, notice the promoters and gurus are practicing the definition of success: they don’t give up and continue to email you enticements to buy your way into the easy life by trading your cash for their 30-day money-back guaranteed package of hope.
So let me offer you this:
Continue after your goal rather than trying once or twice and giving up.
Yes: Bring your intelligence into it, widen your knowledge by learning more, and improve what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, like improving through careful practice.
And No: Don’t merely be a one-trick pony hoping you’ll eventually get the result you want… or practice insanity while fooling yourself that you just need to try harder or the payoff is just around the next corner or internet marketing is so easy a brain-dead caveman could do it.
Because some games are rigged.
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