Just as when you come to see me as a physiotherapist I would try to diagnose pathophysiology from certain symptoms, failure and success can also be diagnosed.
The reason is that a person does not simply “find” success or “come to” failure. You carry the seeds around in your personality and character.
I have found one of the most effective means of helping people achieve “successful” personality is to first of all give them a graphic picture of what the successful personality looks like.
Remember, the creative guidance mechanism within you is a goal-striving mechanism, and the first requisite for using it is to have a clear cut goal or target to shoot for.
A great many people want to “improve” themselves, and long for a “better personality,” who have no clear-cut idea of the direction in which improvement lies, nor what constitutes a “good personality.” A good personality is one which enables you to deal effectively and appropriately with environment and reality, and to gain satisfaction from reaching goals which are important to you.
Time and again, I have seen confused and unhappy people “straighten themselves out,” when they were given a goal to shoot for and a straight course to follow.
𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗥𝗼𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗥𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀
For example, a man in his early forties, who feels strangely insecure and dissatisfied with himself after receiving an important promotion.
It doesn’t make sense. I’ve worked for this and dreamed about it. It’s just what I’ve always wanted. I know I can do the work. And yet, for some reason my self-confidence is shaken. I suddenly wake up, as if from a dream, and ask myself—’What in the world is a small potatoes like me doing in a job like this?’
The ‘have-it-all’ woman, whose children were “driving her crazy” and whose husband irritated her so much that she “teed off on him” at least twice a week for no cause.
What is the matter with me? My children are really nice kids I should be proud of. My husband is really a nice guy, and I’m always ashamed of myself afterwards.
The trouble with these people is self-image. They find themselves in a new role, and are not sure what kind of a person they are supposed to “be” in order to live up to that role. Or, they have never developed a clear-cut self-image of themselves in any role.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗶𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀
In this and future posts, I am going to give you the same “exercise prescription” that I would give you should you come to my clinic.
The first component you need to develop and “Success-type” personality is…
𝗦𝗘𝗡𝗦𝗘 𝗢𝗙 𝗗𝗜𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡
The executive man above “straightens himself out” and regains his confidence once he sees clearly that for several years he had been motivated by strong personal goals which he wanted to attain, including securing his present position. These goals, which were important to him, kept him on the track.
However, since he got the promotion, he ceases to think in terms of what he wants, but in terms of what others expected of him, or whether he is living up to other people’s goals and standards.
He is the skipper of a ship who has relinquished his hold upon the wheel, and hopes that he drifts in the right direction. He is a mountain climber, who as long as he looks upward to the peak he is scaling, feels and acts courageously and boldly.
But when he gets to the top, he feels there is nowhere else to go, and begins to look down, and becomes afraid.
He is now defending his present position rather than acting like a goal-striver and being on the offensive to attain his goal.
He regains control when he sets himself new goals and begins to think in terms of, “What do I want out of this job? What do I want to achieve? Where am I going?”
A person is like a bicycle that maintains, its poise and equilibrium, only so long as it is going forward towards something.
You have a good bicycle. Your trouble is you are trying to maintain your balance sitting still, with no place to go. It’s no wonder you feel shaky.
We are engineered as goal-seeking mechanisms.
When we have no personal goal that we are interested in and which “means something” to us, we are apt to “go around in circles,” feel “lost” and find life itself “aimless,” and “purposeless.”
We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.
People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile.
𝙀𝙭𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙞𝙨𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙘𝙧𝙞𝙥𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣:
Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project.
Decide what you want out of a situation.
Always have something ahead of you to “look forward to”—to work for and hope for.
Navigate forward, not backward.
Develop what one of the automobile manufacturers calls “the forward look.”
Develop a “nostalgia for the future” instead of for the past.
The “forward look” and a “nostalgia for the future” can keep you youthful. #
Even your body doesn’t function well when you stop being a goal-striver and “have nothing to look forward to.”
This is the reason that very often when a man retires, he dies shortly thereafter.
When you’re not goal-striving, not looking forward, you’re not really “living.”
In addition to your purely personal goals, have at least one impersonal goal—or “cause”–which you can identify yourself with. Get interested in some project to help your fellow man—not out of a sense of duty, but because you want to.
Yours optimally,
Scott
This post is inspired by and a modified extract from the book, ‘Psycho-Cybernetics‘ by Maxwell Maltz
Read more… The Habit of Happiness