“Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.”
—Jim Rohn.
Not only did the animals enter Noah’s ark two-by-two, success too is a two-by-two game. Creating affirmations and living them out, as well as affirmation—of itself—regarding life goals, are both important. But without application to the perspective of life, outcomes bear little or no resemblance to our preconceived notions of success.
Success is very thin at these flighty non-applied heights and it’s certainly not sustainable so we often give up. Try failing to live out a dream ten or fifteen times and we soon see ourselves as failures in our ventures toward success. We simply miss a vital ingredient.
I recall this was one of the criticisms of the early Lou Tice success material; it relied on too much of what behaviourists might call ‘antecedent overload.’ Positive thinking gurus too have focused perhaps too much on the mental inputs to the exclusion of the actual practice of disciplined action—one foot in front of the other toward the logical end goal.
We must not only think ourselves into acting differently (i.e. affirmations) we must also act ourselves into thinking differently. It’s not an either/or situation but a both/and formula that engenders our best chances of success.
We must quite plainly utilise all our ingenuity, drive and positive thinking if we’re to draw success, and none of this will happen without a lot of resilience; as AC/DC say in their song, ‘It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock ‘n’ roll.’
Most people bent on success totally overplay their actual chances of cracking the big time. With a lack of realism they dream and dream and dream, yet they’re no closer to the desired outcomes than the next person. In fact, repeated failure only subliminally reinforces what they can’t do. What gets them closer, however, is action—prudent, well-directed, courageous-at-times action.
Combine this discipline of action with causative, performance-based reflection and the mix of resilience-based affirmations and at once there’s perhaps a ten percent chance. We’re in the ball park suddenly.
Nothing beats the application to do that thing we want to be known successfully for, for the pure love of doing it, perfecting it as we go. We focus on the process and leave the outcomes to themselves, though if we’re human we’ll occasionally glance the way of the results. We can’t help that but at least we don’t overtly focus on the things we cannot control.
Delusion equals frustration, a place no one wants to go. It’s also equal to wasted precious time; another place we’d not venture to. So, desires for success must be balanced with the knowledge of realism and the plain love of doing that thing.
The touch of realism and the necessary discipline to accompany such dreams we hold gives us at least a fighting chance of achieving success.
Everyone has their own version of success, and by that we all desire it. Rather than affirm to succeed we’re always better served in actually doing something about it, bridging the dreaming-doing gap.
Less talk more action.
© 2009 S. J. Wickham.
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