Friday, November 9, 2012

Peter Pan and NeverLand

"The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up."
John C. Maxwell.

"Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it."
-JM Barrie, Peter Pan

Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, I am tired of hearing or saying "maybe", "eventually", "I will try", and "hopefully". These are not terms to keep away a sense of failure. In fact, they actually encourage failure as they remove your responsibility for ultimate decisions. If you do not want to beat yourself up about a failure, use your coping mechanisms. If you do not have appropriate coping mechanisms, take the steps needed to develop those! It is not rocket science and I am tired of seeing this used as a scape goat. Or the phrasing of a promise being used to turn it into something meaningless and legalistic. 

Every body has their flaws and failures. Saying, "I will do whatever I can to make my vision or my goal a success" is not saying that if, at the end of the day, you have fallen a step behind or had a set back that you have failed. It is saying, "you know what? I'm not done yet." I have a tendancy to fall into a "why bother" mentality. This is poisonous. I recognize this and I'm trying to change it. Oh wait. There is that word. Try. No I`m not trying. I AM changing it. It just might take me a little longer than I expected. I take responsibility for my failure, for the people I might have hurt in that momentary lapse of control or the events I might have changed. 

"Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the see of either success or failure in the mind of another."
-Napoleon Hill

My guy drives me crazy with the "I can't promise anything but I'll try" philosophy he has. He wants to know that he has not committed to doing something so that if he wants an out or a way around something he has it. When he says "I'll try" I assume he really means that it may or may not ever happen, because his attempts are often surface level (but not all of the time... so it is safer to assume the negative). He is setting himself up to fail at trying, because he now has no real responsibility to actually see something through or complete something. 

Ie: I will try and make it to my doctors appointment translates to, I will call somebody I know has an business meeting that day to see if they can give me a ride. If they can't, at least I tried to get a ride to the appointment. 

Because if he legitimately tries to get a ride to that appointment, and there isn't someone who can drive him, he is going to feel trapped that he can't just get himself there. Or, if he does get a ride and that appointment tells him something negative like he has an infection or something (sorry, its was an example I pulled out of no where so I'm not so organized with it) he is going to wish he hadn't gone because what he doesn't know can't hurt him. 

However, that sense of failure or entrapment is his own attitude. He would chose to look at the negative, not the positive. Not, oh well I can reschedule and everything will be fine. Or, alternately, at least I found out now and can treat it.

For anyone who uses these terms, I would like you to take a moment and check your motivation. I know I need to do that daily! Do you use them because you legitimately mean there is a chance, or you're going to try your best at something? Or are you saying it because it is absolving you of responsibility if you fail? Here's the thing. Failure is not permanent. So if that is why you are doing it, please stop. Chose silence over words you don't mean or make that commitment to following through! The time something is permanent is when you make it so. Life will give you and infinite amount of options. Not all of them will be good, and not all will be bad. All failure does is weed out one of the negative options and show you a positive one!


"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
Winston Churchill


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