There is No Failure
by Cindy Teevens, Business Developer, Master NLP Practitioner
When you drop the ball, do you sit-down and stop playing? Some people would believe dropping it to be failure. Well, that is certainly an option to choose. But I would say that you were quite successful at dropping the ball, and further successful at sitting down and stopping. In reality, there is no failure. There are only results. Whether the response you produce is stopping and calling it a failure, or learning from the results and successfully getting back into the game, that is your decision.
“Success” and “Failure” are judgments, they are powerful ideas that will either limit and freeze you, or free you to move forward. As long as you continue to move forward with learnings, there can be no such thing as failure. Your success is guaranteed!
Remember: There is no failure, only feedback.
“Ok,” you say, “fine, everything is a result, but they were not the results I wanted!” Agreed. And what are the learnings from that? Look around, there are concrete learnings available that are related to the actions you took, to the results you got, to your beliefs, to your state, or all of the above. Being aware of and using the feedback will lead you toward your success. So let’s take a look at these, one at a time.
Not getting the results you wanted? Then do something different. Did you know that it took Thomas Edison 10,000 “failures” to create the light bulb? That’s right, 10,000 bulbs blew-up, flopped, or fizzled before he found just the right combination for a light bulb to work. And they STILL burn-out, however that degree of “failure” is quite acceptable, so the light bulb became a true success that changed the world. Cobbling-together ingredients for cookies will not get you brownies. So change the recipe. Do something different. If you are out of ideas, just do something–anything–different, and keeping doing something different until you have learned how to get the results you want.
Regarding your state, do you believe the statement “I don’t feel like it?” Do you believe it so much that it keeps you from acting? Is it possible for “not feeling like it” to keep your legs from moving? To keep you from taking one small step? If you believe you have to “feel like it” first before you can do something, you have given-away your power, and your life.
What if you could do something about how you feel?
When you feel disempowered, or like a failure, it is not because of anything going-on outside of you. It is because you have bought-into a disempowering thought inside, which will cause disempowering feelings, inside.
And when you are feeling like a failure, how do you act? Do you do your best? Do you do all you can? Do you act successful? If you don’t act successful and don’t do things successfully, how can you ever be successful? Efforts like this are insane. You need to be what you want first , in order to do what you need to do, to create what you want. As Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see…” It was not just a figure of speech or nice thought, he means it literally.
That all said, I know, it can be very challenging to act resourcefully, being your true self with your full capabilities, when you feel unresourceful. So here is the first truth about how we feel:
Thoughts become feelings, become behaviours/actions, become things.
So watch the thoughts that you hold and which you repeatedly tell yourself. Simply seeing them as often as you can means you have already changed. You are already seeing that you can change your thoughts first by simply noticing them, and then by trying-on and choosing another thought which could be just as true–or truer!
When the red-flag of a negative feeling pops-up, ask yourself what you have to be believing to feel that way. You will find the thought. Then reach for a better-feeling thought, one that could be just a true. By watching the thought, you also come to know that you are not your thoughts.
The fact that you cannot hold and feel more than one thought at a time could mislead you to think you are your thought, at the time. And certainly, you can pretend to be your thoughts and feelings, and choose to act them out, but you must be more than that.
I mean, if you were your thoughts then after having just one–you’d never need another!
Try to imagine: There it is, your thought.
There You are, the thought.
Is that all You are?
You can think more than one thought precisely because you are not your thoughts.
Since you cannot hold more than one thought at a time, you also cannot also hold opposing thoughts. Which type of thought makes you feel better and gives you more resources? Which do you want? Which do you chose?
You also cannot hold a thought for longer than 20 seconds. Go ahead, think one, and try…and try really hard to hold it. As you can see, to maintain a train of thinking, you must feed that fire continuously with fresh, similar or same thoughts. As a result, there are lots of opportunities and moments to change what you think, which will change how you feel. And that is why you can change.
You could choose to think you are a failure, or some other negative thought. In that case, you might be willing to explore the truth of that by carefully and thoroughly considering the following questions, one-at-a-time:
So you thought you were a failure.
And is that all you thought you were?
You do know you are bigger than that, right?
What are you that’s NOT that?
Take some time to fully consider, and write it down.
And considering all that you have written down–how much bigger are you than that?
Now…. How do you know?
That’s right.
When you see your thoughts as separate from you, then you are the Watcher you always were, only now you know it. Now you have power because if you are not your thoughts, then you can choose them, and because thoughts become feelings, you can choose your experience. The only remaining question now is:
How do you want to be?
Think about that.
And how does thinking about that make you feel?
That’s all well and fine, you might say, and yet ask, “Well it’s too late, I’m already feeling awful, how can I feel better now?” I know, a negative state can become very heavy, very convincing, if you allow it. If the thought-feeling cycle has already worked itself-up into a good frenzy, it may seem so thick, so real. But it’s not.
Have you ever been in a deep emotional state–and literally stayed there? That would mean that you are still there, even as you read this. You know in your true experience that like clouds that arise and dissipate, emotions come and go. They always change. They have to, for that is the very nature of life, everything always changes. So now we have the second truth about how we feel: it will change. So how “real” can it really be?
Since the mind cycles every 20-minutes, if you have unconsciously been thinking and believing negatively for longer than that, it may have settled deeply into your body. The body always reflects the state of mind. If you are feeling “up”, your head will be up, your body will be up, your energy will be up. If you are thinking “down” your body will show “down”…your shoulders will drop, your head will drop, your energy will drop…you may even drop to the couch.
The body may seem like a slave to the mind, but this is not so. It can also be used to pick-the-mind-up because the body and mind are not separate. So if you are feeling a negative state, and conscious of it, and want to shift states, then for starters, shift your body. In spite of how you are feeling, you can still stand-up, move, move faster, face a new direction, leave the room, run, put music on, or even dance. It took you twenty minutes or more to work yourself into the negative state, so give your bodymind at least 20+ minutes to shift. With practice, this gets easier, and can actually be done faster.
After using the body to help you shift, the mind can really speed things up. I am willing to bet that you have already experienced such a shift, and practically instantly. Have you ever been feeling down or upset, and then a good friend shows-up at the door, or calls, and suddenly “everything” changes? In the past you may have attributed this to the friend, to something outside of you.
But now you know that you shifted your body, you got up to meet that friend or get the phone, your head lifted in surprise, your thinking pattern was broken, you began telling yourself different, perhaps nice thoughts, and most of all, you chose to change states, to be present with this person. Now. Reach for the next best feeling thought, and choose to feel better. Any outside issues (and inside ones) will be clearer and resolve themselves faster from this state than any other.
How can you solve a challenge or be successful from the perspective of failure? Does the idea of “failure” have any practical or positive purpose? How does it feel to choose to think it? What if you could NOT think it? You are encouraged to choose to release the concept fully now, and embrace something much more resourceful and pleasant, like “There is no failure, only feedback.” Always look for the feedback, it will keep you away from the impossible failure, and moving forward.
Had Edison labeled himself a failure and yet stayed persistent in his quest, he would have put himself in a very difficult position because believing your self to be something negative will result in powerful negative feelings, foggy thinking, and unresourceful actions. It would make the path to his goal much longer and much more arduous. He may have even eventually lost faith altogether, sat down, and labeled everything a failure, or impossible.
But Edison’s position is infallible: “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” Edison took the learnings from each experience (a more resourceful, beneficial label than “failure”) and used them to create a working light bulb. If he ever backed-down, if he missed one of those learnings, if he ever labeled anything a failure, or worse, if he labeled himself a failure, we might all still be sitting in the dark. Instead, he used each piece of learning to further light-up his way on the path to success. Nothing is impossible, it’s just that you may not have found the way yet.
Beware the power of thoughts, words, labels, feelings, and beliefs. They can work for you or against you, just as successfully.
Read Full Post »
Vani's Weblog 