When we try to do something, especially when we act in a public way, many of us often feel fear, anxiety, trepidation. We don't want the discomfort of failing. We don't want the secondary effects of looking bad in front of other people. We generally don't like unsolicited criticism, even if it's constructive. We don't like being made fun of. We don't like people thinking badly of us.
So it's a great deal safer to not step up, step out, and just be a one of a million bubbles in the white water rapids of life.
After all, if you don't try, you can't fail right? What's the old saying? He who sleeps on the floor cannot fall out of bed?
But is there any fun in sleeping on the floor? Is there any great sense of being alive in not trying - in not stepping out?
What can we do about this?
The love of my life, my wife, Donna is a leader at Weight Watchers. She often uses the metaphor of a GPS.
What does your GPS do when you miss a turnout or go the wrong way?
Does it scold you? Does it make fun of you? (There's a product!) Does it tell you just what a low life you are?
No. What it does is to recalculate a new path to the goal it was given.
It doesn't change the goal. It doesn't quit on me. It doesn't tell me to go to hell, even if I screw up a hundred times on the exact same exit.
When we do things, when we aim for things, especially for things that we're not yet good at, how do we know that we've missed the mark? Don't we have an internal system that is similar to the GPS? Doesn't it tell you, "Nope - you missed the mark."
And then what do we do with this information? Do we say, "Oh - OK - now I have to go this way," as we map out a new course to the same goal? Many of us don't do that. Many of us just quit, which is to say, we give our system a new goal: go home with our tails between our legs.
Surely we can resolve to be at least as effective as a simple GPS.
What can you do if you catch yourself doing stupid emotional stuff after your inner system says you missed the mark? I recommend you simply consider it missing another turn-off and let yourself "recalculate" a path to emotional calmness.
P.S. - If you find this to be a stubborn thing, you might try the method I described in my post, Simple Procedure for Changing Your Behavior.
