Your ability to succeed is based on your poise in failure and your poise under fire, under criticism.  How you handle failure and how you succeed are two sides of the same coin.

When you fail, you either learn to let it go . . . or it sets up housekeeping in your physiology, your gut, your abdomen, your heart, and your head.  Something happens where, physiologically speaking, failure sets in.

Now, if you are sensitive, chances are you’ve learned how to just feel the wave of disappointment and let it go.  But the negative thoughts – some experts refer to them as mind viruses –

• Persist in spite of your willingness to let them go.
• Persist in spite of your willingness to relax and release them.
• Persist in spite of all the positive affirmations you can conjure, and
• Persist in spite of coaches, mentors, and gurus guiding your way.

They persist because, quite frankly, you’re convinced you are a failure, and there is a very good reason for remaining a failure!  This hidden set of reasons, or Seed of Failure (SOF), is the same as the prime directive we spoke of earlier. It must be obeyed in spite of any and all attempts to counter it.

The self-talk that arises from the Seed of Failure is also persistent.  This inner chatter sets up housekeeping in the head and continues to spout its wisdom to us every few minutes.

We attempt to root out the negative self-talk through positive goal setting, through affirmations; through hypnosis; and through any other means we know of in order to get rid of the self-talk, or to make the positive self-talk so much louder that the negative just sort of disappears.

And to a degree, that works.  To a large degree, however, it does not work. Most self-talk is based on decisions made very early in life, often before we can remember learning to talk.  Repeating “every day in every way I am getting better and better” does little good, for example, to heal a gaping hole in your gut caused by an abusive family member.

And what do you do with that type of self-talk that is so deep it’s anchored into your physiology at birth or soon after birth?  Sometimes even before birth??  This type of self-talk is not self-talk at all because it’s pre-language.

All self-talk is based on a decision, however.  Maybe it was made on an organic level – just like an amoeba makes a decision to back away from pain or stimulus.  We make decisions, even in the womb, even shortly after birth, that we back away from pain.  We back away from discomfort.

These types of decisions, which I call organic decisions, are anchored into the physiology and have just as much to do with our success and our ability to handle failure as anything else.  But organic or not, let’s take a few minutes to investigate the Logical Soul^TM method I used to reveal these underlying decisions – the Root of Failure – whatever the source.

Major Decision:  To Stay Open or Not

I used to hear the argument during some of my talks “But why should I focus on failure?”  they asked.  “All I want to do is stay positive!”

I would usually nod my head in understanding, then respond.

“Thanks for the question.  Now, while yours is a wonderful objective, it doesn’t work” I said, adding

“The fact is . . . if all this staying positive stuff DID work, everyone who ever made a goal and affirmation would succeed, would they not?”

“But aren’t you defeating the purpose of trying to achieve goals by focusing on the negative?”

Their words suddenly reminded me of an analogy.

“Let’s say you’re driving down the road headed to a concert,” I proposed, “and your car started smoking from the hood.  You know it’s probably the radiator, so you stop to check and maybe pour in some more water before your engine burns up.

“Now your goal is the concert.  Using your example, I should ignore the smoke and continue to stay focused on arriving at the concert.

“There’s a name for people like this: I call them ‘pedestrians.’”

Next: Discover Your Own Seed of Failure