(Photo by: Marvin Ng)

Why do we accept failure so easily?

Very few people are honest enough to openly talk about what they want. Social pressure and long held beliefs tell us that wanting more is greedy, but there is a silent underground of achievers out there who do talk about wanting more, and within this faction there are two camps. Those that ‘do’, and those that ‘talk!’

Those that do, not only achieve toward their goals, but many also do their best within reason to inspire and motivate those who talk to come across to the doing camp!

Failing is easy. Failing is comfortable and more often than not this is how the conversation goes!

• Resistance – Talk is Cheap
• Victim Mentality
• Sub-Conscious sabotage
• Validation & Comfort Zones

Resistance – Talk is cheap

‘It’s not that easy to do what you’re doing, you don’t understand my situation …’

‘It surely can’t be that simple, there has to be something more complicated than that, and if it was that easy, then everyone would be doing it.’

‘I didn’t study that so I can’t do it!’

Sigh! These are just some of things that I get to hear!

The process of change can be a deep and personally challenging. Even after every argument within the denial stage can be utterly crushed with social evidence and logic, people have the tendency to dig their feet in and simply refuse to move forward toward action.

This is where ‘pre-action’ excuses all come in. These excuses come from Doubt, Fear and Confusion and work tirelessly to keep you fixed in your precise current position in life, often unsatisfied, poor and desperate.

These reactions stem from the most primal part of your brain which desperately want to keep you inside a ‘comfort zone’ within a routine of ‘safety’, and breaking out into new learning and new routines can often involve complex ideas and change that your mind simply doesn’t want to listen to, let alone accept.

Acceptance of something new invalidates everything that came before it, and that can mess things up!

Makes sense? If an idea is risky, could cause greater damage, or is something that is not understood, then why the hell would you bother to listen and accept something that takes effort to understand?

Getting past this massive inertia of resistance alone takes massive effort.

Related: Why success starts in your head first

Victim Mentality

For the minority of talkers that decide to take action, the majority of these people will give up at the first set back.

It is easy to say that this comes down to the level of commitment that anyone is willing to provide, but giving up easily comes down to prejudicial bias.

‘I gave it a go and it didn’t do what we were shown.’

‘I tried and it didn’t work, just like I thought it would.’

‘It didn’t work, I wasn’t shown everything. This is just someone else’s fault.’

Blame, Excuses and Denial are what come up time and time again, when it comes to early failures. After all if something doesn’t work, or if something doesn’t perform then there is only one ‘logical’ factor, ‘the method or system is flawed?’

Yet, the result is not analysed, factors are not taken into account. No trend is established with evidence gathered from multiple outcomes.

The simple action and the path of least resistance is to simply give up, and fall back into the comfort of doing what is known, regardless of how poor it performs.

People require infinite amounts of evidence to consider change, but only hearsay to give up!

Related: Why money for time is a poor trade

Sub-Conscious sabotage

Change is not a comfortable process, and establishing a winning mindset is no easy task, particularly when it challenges personal values and beliefs that have been held over an entire lifetime.

In fact routine is such a powerful force, and comfort such a powerful desire, that even when new and better outcomes are possible and within reach, at the very worst case there can be a tendency to self-sabotage one’s own efforts.

The worst part of self-sabotage is the acts of doing so aren’t even grand or overtly malicious.

They’re subtle actions and choices.

Finding an excuse not to attend a class. Being ‘afraid’ of talking to someone who can provide help or guidance. Double booking your calendar with a zero-value activity rather than doing something extremely important which could kick start your success journey.

Believe me I know!

Getting comfortable within being uncomfortable may seem like the most stressful thing you can do, but you can only achieve new results through new actions.

By doing the same things over and over again with no functional results, the path of least resistance tells us that nothing works and to give up so that you can spend more time watching reality TV.

Related: The Latte of Fury

Validation & Comfort Zones

Especially when there is a prejudicial bias to the process of change and the expected result, failures achieve one thing more effectively than anything else.

They validate your initial assumption that you would fail in the first place.

Failures ‘prove’ to the biased, that it is better to have done nothing in the first place, rather than put in any time and energy into any activity and end up exactly where you started.

This validation also prevents you from extracting the lesson behind the failure so that you can try again, because assumption validates that all actions will fail.

Validation is the final nail in the coffin that will keep you in your comfort zone, no matter how uncomfortable it actually is.

‘It surely can’t be that simple, there has to be something more complicated than that, and if it was that easy, then everyone would be doing it.’

Failing is easy … that’s why everyone does it!

Related: The power of tapping into your motivators

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