I don’t spend too much time looking at the opposite side to success, as frankly, I know that studying the problem is not the solution. In fact, this just causes the problem to expand.
But there are times when the problem needs to be expanded a little so we can feel enough pain to change. It is when all people feel enough pain that it allows them to overcome their lack of self-confidence and do what they want to do with their life, instead of letting it slip away from them.
So if your life is not going according to the way you once dreamt it would, and you’ve reached the point of wondering, ‘why is life so hard?’ Then what I am going to cover here are just a few of the traits that make up a ‘failure mindset’.
If you notice them, you become aware of them, and great power to change waits for you in awareness.
What I’ve listed here also just happens to be the mindset of most people on the planet and if you are not living the life you desire then you almost certainly one of them.
~ Whatever we give our dominant attention to becomes our reality ~
Napoleon Hill
1. Concentrating on lack
Successful people focus on what they desire… and they work in every way they can possibly conceive to bring that desire into their reality. They dream about where they are going but they focus their work on doing the steps which are needed to take them there.
Unsuccessful people focus on what they don’t have and what they don’t want. They do not have a clear picture of what they do want, so they can’t focus on that…. because they can’t see it! Instead, they focus on the lack of what they want.
The easy solution for them is, therefore, to focus on their lack of money because they see that as the solution to their problems. They wrongly assume that money alone will improve their position and their self-esteem.
However, money has its own set of problems, but unsuccessful people can’t slow down to notice that. They see money as the solution to everything and that they will deal with the problems that come with it, when they get to it… They think that when they get there, then there will be much better than here, so they would rather have that.
Is this you, you are concentrating on lack and will not create abundance. You cannot create what you want by focusing on the opposite.
The solution is to not focus on what you don’t want but to create a world where when you have what you desire, what you are struggling with right now to get away from… simply cannot exist.
2. Using excessive effort
Successful people are seen as the hard workers, the ones who will go the extra mile. However, this is only a poor understanding of the success mindset.
Successful people work hard in specific high value and high return areas… They do not just work hard, they work hard on an area which will get them the greatest results from the work they do.
In fact, most successful people I know are lazy, they will not do anything that does not produce for them the results they are looking to get. They work hard (i.e. they pay now) so that they can relax later.
Unsuccessful people mostly want it now and decide they will worry about later, later. This creates the need to worry later about later too. Unsuccessful people are also the most wonderful procrastinators. They expand massive effort and get virtually no return on their investment.
A successful person works for 1,000 hours on something and produces something worthwhile which may return them dividends for the rest of their life. They haven’t expanded excessive effort, they have used appropriate effort.
An unsuccessful person works hard for 1,000 hours and has just been busy. They may have earned enough to buy a big-screen TV. But as soon as they’ve bought it, whatever they buy is usually worthless.
Whereas what the successful person created could buy them a big-screen TV every year for the rest of their life. A successful mindset knows their time has a value and cannot be replaced, an unsuccessful person knows their time can be bought for an hourly amount.
The unsuccessful person uses their time inappropriately and so by default uses excessive effort to produce a little return.
3. Working too hard in the wrong way
An unsuccessful person wrongly assumes that if they work 1,000 hours that they will be better off. They consider that they have worked 40 hours a week for a year then they must be better off…
This assumption leads then to the wrong conclusion. They know that they are better off and because they know it, they don’t bother to get a calculator out and measure it.
If they measured it then they would find that they are no better off, and may actually be worse off both in life and financially. They have also invested 1 year from their lifetime of work account, so they invested 1/45th of their account and got no return.
4. Grin and bear it
People think that a successful person has the ‘grin and bear it’ attitude. And in a way that can be true, but not in the way they assume it is.
A successful person knows instinctively that success lies on the far side of failure, so while they do not like failure, they accept it in a workman style way.
They also know that success may be waiting just behind this current failure. So they are not really grinning and bearing it, they are smiling at the possibility that they may be close to making a breakthrough. They have the advantage of doing what they love, so they are just happy to be doing it.
Unsuccessful people think they couldn’t grin and bear it, so they think… ‘Why disappoint myself…’ This attitude displays completely that they are doing the wrong thing to make it happen.
How could they grin and bear it? They don’t like it or love it… so they are in pain. How could they ever go through all the setbacks to get to success if they are in this sort of pain? Is it a surprise they fail?
They do not realise that if they were like a successful person, they could plan their success and it would be doing something they love doing. If they loved doing it then it wouldn’t be work or painful to them, it would be their hobby. It would be a pleasure.
5. After overwhelm
The unsuccessful consider that if they work harder and harder, try and do more and more, then ‘eventually’ that will lead them to success.
They have no basis for this assumption, it is just something they conjured up in their mind. Actually, it was what their ego told them to do. Their ego loves to keep them busy and not thinking. While they are on this journey they are usually suffering with overwhelm. The ego loves them to feel overwhelmed!
However, after the desperation of overwhelm overwhelms them and the result is in, or rather not in… And they have concluded that it isn’t going to work! Then they end up burnt out, feeling like a failure because they have been charging ahead in the wrong direction.
They feel desperate to achieve something but they look at what they’ve done and realise that they haven’t achieved much at all. And if they had known this at the start would never have started doing it.
6. It’s not my fault
So they feel let down and want to blame someone for their complete failure. Their ego does its job and provides them with plenty of possible people to blame…
None of which are to blame of course, as none of them were the person responsible. The ego will of course never let an unsuccessful person accept the truth that it is them who is to blame.
Their ego will not allow them to find the solution, instead, it will keep leading them the wrong way just so that it can keep them trapped and stuck in life.
The unsuccessful person’s mindset literally doesn’t know what to do. It is trying to do so much and getting nowhere. All it knows is, it’s not my fault… It no longer ‘believes’ this, in fact, it doubts it. But the voice in their head tells them, ‘No it’s not your fault!’ So they end up listening as the voice gets to talk to them 24/7.
The unsuccessful mindset now tries anything in a desperate attempt to escape from being trapped. They have no idea that the person who has trapped them is themselves, and the person who is now mocking them has them trapped in the life it wants them to have.
7. Ignoring the whispers
They are now in spiralling doom and basically the chances of escape are almost non-existent. However, their subconscious mind can still help them… Their intuition can still help them, but these are whispers in the darkness and are mostly ignored.
The unsuccessful person’s ego convinces them that these whispers are just dreams and not worthy of their attention… So they ignore them and go back to being trapped.
However, a successful person’s mind is still in tune with its intuition and in tune with their subconscious thoughts. They still listen and when their ego speaks the successful person’s mind instinctively knows not to assume the idea is right or that their ego is right. But instead, they go and test the assumption.
A successful person knows to listen and then to test. An unsuccessful person knows to listen and then to judge. This may be the primary reason why they will never become the success they dream of.
Judgement is weakness, observation is power. A successful person observes and tests, an unsuccessful person observes (thinks they know), then judges, then dismisses…
All of these are mindset bugs which must be removed. You have placed them there, they are not natural, therefore with your presence and attention you can remove them and not allow them to come back.
If you stopped me and asked me for just one piece of advice which would lead to your eventual success, it would be this… go and read the first five chapters of my book and expect to find out something extremely powerful about yourself which you DO NOT CURRENTLY KNOW.
This first step will lead you in the direction which you must follow if you wish to bring about your dreams within this lifetime.
Get more info about my books: A Bug Free Mind Trial Offer
“Successful people focus on what they desire… and they work in every way they can possibly conceive to bring that desire into their reality.”
“Successful people use the word failure as do unsuccessful ones. But successful people know that failure is merely the prelude to eventual success, so it does not slow them down.”
