“Success comes from taking the initiative and following up… persisting… eloquently expressing the depth of your love. What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life? ” - Anthony Robbins

I failed. Yep, you read it right. I failed, not one course, but two courses which is definitely a setback, but I digress. Of course I didn’t really mean the “you fail at life comment” literally, but I’m sure some of you can relate to this experience where you walk out of an exam (or anything else “important” in life for that matter) knowing that you failed. It’s the feeling of self-perceived complete and utter failure that overshadows all other aspects of your life bringing it to a screeching halt.

I confirmed the results of my exams the other day, and I didn’t even flinch because I already sentenced myself to this outcome through self-sabotage – on both conscious and subconscious levels. It also didn’t help when I joked around being the “worst accountant in the world”. Don’t get me wrong, though, this post isn’t to whine about what happened, rather it is to own my failure (because I “earned” it), man up, and reflect upon the experience and just keep moving forward.I purposely stayed away from this blog because I didn’t want to report back to the faceless readers of my blog with my tail between my legs because I was all about “rah-rah self improvement” and then having it all crash down upon me. My internal-dialogue and self-talk up until my exams was not aligned with where I wanted to be. Simply not “feeling” the material was no excuse to pour everything I had into my studies as well as anything self improvement related. While I was feeling good while burying myself under a pile of “feel good” self improvement related books, I wasn’t focusing the fundamentals – a solid foundation that I was grounded in to truly make some REAL progress in the ultimate goal of graduating. I made a mountain out a molehill, I was a self improvement junkie and I didn’t actually believe I could do it. How fucked up is that?Yes, there was wallowing in self pity and beating myself up over the outcome. But no, I’m bigger and stronger than that to shirk from being accountable and fully responsible for my actions that led to this “setback”.After some thorough self-analysis I realized what the factors were that led to this crash-and-burn experience. It’s ironic that while all this time I was fearing and trying to avoid failure, it would nonetheless be the outcome of all that action. This was one of the keys to my “demise” - I wasn’t aiming for success, I was avoiding failure. How’s that for setting the bar low and sealing my fate?Without writing on and on about how I failed, I want to cut to the chase. I failed because:

• I feared for irrational reasons, constantly thinking about how tough the courses would be
• I didn’t believe in myself
• I didn’t assess advice given to me critically to see if it would really work for me or not
• I didn’t have a solid foundation and a regimen that I would stick to and follow through on, no matter how long it took for me to understand school related material
• Even though I tried to surround myself with those people who were successful in my program, I effectively disqualified myself from hanging out with them because I believed I wasn’t “good enough” for them.\
• I had an “Escape button” handy in case things got awry. I had a letter of permission from my university to study at another university in case things didn’t work out for my Corporate Taxation and my Business Combinations course.

While I’m not blaming anyone except myself for this outcome, I took some advice from well-intentioned friends without being too critical and assessing whether it work with my personality. I had a cookie-cutter mould of what a “Great Way to Start a Day” was. If anything deviated from that routine, all hell would break loose and I’d lose another productive day due to the problematic reason of not “feeling it”. I dropped activities such as training for my half-marathon and cutting back on the attendance of my Toastmasters meetings to focus on what really matter at the time, to pass my courses successfully.The discipline with respect to my health was unparalleled compared to any other time in my life, and with the removal of this one “thread” it had unravelled all the progress I had made and I slipped back into old habits. I was near cutting through my credit card debt after a 3 month regimen of living frugally, I was half way through my training for a half-marathon, I lost close to 8 pounds after watching what I ate and working out at least 4 times a week, I popped a vitamin pill first thing in the morning – all of that was undone and the only habit I really retained was making my bed right after I hop out of bed. Now I have to do it all over – again.Although it’s clearly frustrating being in this position, it made me dig real deep inside make sense of this outcome. This led me to think about what I needed in order to have myself fire on all cylinders and have things just flow the way I want them to. Through all of the material I’ve read, it’s come down to just four words that sum up what I need to stick to and follow through. Clarity, Focus, Action, Fulfillment.Clarity – I need to be completely clear with what I want my outcomes to be. So in my case, by the end of the summer is to finish off my courses in order to graduate by October.Focus – what this would entail is to go so far as scheduling what I need to do – ideally a week in advance – and focusing on hitting these outcomes with no distraction and immersing myself in that action or activity. No computers, no books, just me and what I need to finish. No ifs, ands or buts.Action – you need to act in order to do accomplish anything.Fulfillment – this would involve daily journaling and measuring my progress to see how I’m doing, how far I’ve come along, and ultimately celebrating that progress each step of the way.What I will be doing from here on in is focusing on a solid foundation in order to give me the energy, focus and confidence to do what I need to do. The foundation involves cultivating Spirit, Mind and Body that would build rock solid “inner game” – a superior belief system to accomplish anything I put my mind to. Nothing should or will compromise this foundation once I’ve built it from scratch.After listening to and reading from cover to back again, David Deida’s The Way of the Superior Man, I realized that I had been lacking an edge, a true mission or “purpose” that moved me inside. I wasn’t authentic to who and what I want to become. I fell into an almost delusional outlook of how the future had in store for me. I didn’t align myself with anything that I felt I could use as creative outlet to pour my mind, body and soul into for fulfillment. I have the “fresh new start” I’ve been yearning for now that I’m at the beginning of my summer courses.There are NO EXCUSES now and there’s no looking back or regrets. There is only the Now, complete and utter focus on the process of moving forward. If I stumble, I’ll still be able to make it there because I have absolute clarity and all the reasons I need of why I want to achieve my yearly goals.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 9:53 pm and is filed under authenticity, confidence, fear, goal setting, purpose, studying habits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.