I stole this article from David Trent from Trent Capital Management in Little Rock. He published this article as part of his weekly newsletter.
Ironically, I received this newsletter on Monday, two days after I failed on my second attempt to climb a 100′ cliff at Crowder’s Mountain in Gastonia, NC. While I didn’t reach my goal, the experience taught me a lot more about myself. This article reinforces the point.
“One of the ” First things that happened when we set any goal is it the brain seizes up and tells us why it’s a bad idea and won’t happen.”
Often, when setting a goal, we start out with a big goal and then immediately scale that goal back to make it more realistic and reasonable. We repeat this process until we end up making very little progress with any of our goals. This is the very reason why many of us shy away from goal-setting. We don’t want to be uncomfortable and ultimately disappointed, because we know we won’t follow through. However, when you start the goal with a different way of thinking about it, your brain loses its ability to “scale back to comfort.“ You already know that the goal is “impossible” and that you will fail, so, now what? What does your brain argue with now? Your brain might say, “if you know you’re going to fail, why in the world would you do it?” Because the alternative is also failing. We set a goal and then defeat ourselves before we even give it a solid effort. We think this type of failure is better because “nothing has been lost.” But that’s a lie. You are losing out on the learning, you are losing out on the knowing, and you have no idea what your last opportunity could have been. I think a lot about the goals I have accomplished. If I had decided that they were “too hard“ and failed ahead of time, it would’ve cost me my current life and the amazing clients I now have. So even though we believe that if we don’t try, we can’t fail – I think that’s a lie. Failing ahead of time is still failure, but you learned nothing and as a result, stole your evolution and growth. If you think about it, failing repeatedly is how we accomplish most great things. Instead of failing only to win, I’m also encouraging you to also fail in order to learn how to fail and as well as learning from that failure. I’m convinced that this is the most important skill I could ever teach you. You never know where your failures might lead you. But your failures ahead of time are guaranteed to lead you nowhere. They will just have you repeating the life you already have by believing your excuses, which give you evidence for why you can’t progress.
Source: Self Coaching 101
“So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. ” – Hebrews 10:35-36