There are many ways to succeed…and there are ten times as many ways to fail. I can never hope to list every way there is to fail nor every way there is to succeed in life. No one, no matter who they may be, can ever show a path completely. All any can hope to do is help illuminate the path ahead. Light a lantern on the path for no one person is the sun.
And that is what I will attempt to do today. When I look at around at modern society around me as well as my own struggles through life there are certain things that I’ve seen come again and again and again when it comes to failing and not getting what one wants out of life.
Things that come up again and again in coaching clients, in friends and family, as well as what I see others struggling with in their writings and sharings across the community, web, and more. And much of this boils down to getting a few things right for success or getting a few things wrong for failure.
Essentially when we look at failings and the many ways there are to fail it comes from lack of control. And when we look at success and the many permutations of success much of its comes down to controlling what we can.
Now what do I mean by that?
The Man, Not The Situation
We live and die by our own choices. I remembering hearing a quote one time that life is ten percent what happens to us and ninety percent how we deal with it. And while there are certainly notable exceptions to that, I think it holds true for most things in life and especially with success and failure. The human will and spirit can overcome almost anything, except death, and we’ve all heard or seen those that have accomplished much despite much being against them.
Building on what I was saying before failure often comes down to failure to control and success comes from understanding and utilizing control. But the question then, is control or lack of control of what? Of circumstance? No, that’d be impossible, hence my divergence above. But rather of one’s self, one’s drives, urges. Learning how to harness one’s body, mind, and soul to drive one to success and right functioning.
Failure to do so leaves you at the mercy of the society around you. In tribal times this wasn’t always bad as the tribe was designed to strengthen its members. Not in today’s modern society being left to the “tribe” means being left to a modern commercial society that wants to extract maximum resources to you and will hinder your development in order to do this.
Hence we must learn to harness our own drives. Understand how they work and how we can work with them instead of having them work against us. Understanding how to human animal works so that we can better understand ourselves and the world around us, which is, after all, a human world.
Directing The Drives
Maybe controlling was the wrong word to use. Because control seems more like you have complete dominance over something where what we’re talking about here is more directing than controlling. You need to take your drives and direct them in a positive manner. So let’s take a look at what that looks like in concrete terms.
Let’s say we have James. James right now is 24 years old, lives in an apartment with a few roommates, has a low paying job, did some university but nothing every came of it. Has no girlfriend or prospects, spends weekends drinking and smoking with friends, and has gained a bit of pudge.
What can James do to change his situation? Now first off I wouldn’t label James a “failure” necessarily. He’s holding down a job which is more than many can say. But I think we can all agree this life is not the life that man has aspired too since the brutal times of prehistory?
So what to do?
James needs a couple of things. Knowledge, first and foremost. But also direction. How does James accomplish this? First off he has to have a desire to change, even if faint. A small candle can turn to a raging house fire. But inert ground will never burst forth into flame. But anyways after a desire, even if small what can James do?
The first thing is to start replacing bad habits with good, one at a time, slowly but surely. If he tries to change everything at once this will only result in failure. Likewise is he only tries to take out bad habits without replacing them with good ones, he will also fail.
The first thing to do is take one bad habit and one good habit. Work on building the good habit and stopping the bad habit. And here’s what I’d recommend to James.
Start with diet.
And here’s why.
Motivation and drive is a neurological phenomenon. If we could hop into our brains and direct where all the neurotransmitters went and responded to we’d never have a problem with motivation. But we can’t do that so must revert to other methods to do what we can with this.
Diet, meditation also works good as a first one, works directly on your brain. What you eat affects your brain and neurotransmitters. So when you’re having trouble this is one of the first places to address. Let’s say James wants to stop smoking, okay again diet will help tremendously with this.
So he starts adding in some eggs and liver. Twice a week he has liver and every morning he eats a few eggs. Nothing revolutionary but still a move in the right direction. He does this for a month and finds he is smoking less than he has for years.
He still smokes, he still has lots of problems, but he’s on the right path. Five years down the line. He eats a healthy diet, works out, reads, works at a office and has his own house, he’s dating a girl he likes a lot, he’s lost the pudge and cleared his mind. And so on and so forth.
Little things make big differences. Control the little things and they’ll get you success.
Fail to control the little things, the things you can control and you’ll end up a failure.
How To Be Mediocre
Let yourself be controlled by your base drives and desires. Do nothing to reign them in, do nothing to control them, let yourself be a slave to them. You’ll end up mediocre. Have no fear your brain will rationalize all sorts of reasons why this has happened, none of them being your fault. Like a western mother excusing her little monster’s every defect. You’ll end up mediocre, soft, and eventually destroyed.
Or take responsibility. Start small and work from there. No one has climbed a mountain in one step, especially when starting from a ditch. We are no exception. Step by step we make ourselves day in and day out.
If you want help in your journey I’d recommend picking up some of my books on Amazon or clicking over the Ultimate Alpha collection. My copywriting instincts tell me to make hyperlinks for the books but if that’s what separates someone from clicking or not then they weren’t going to make it anyways.
Anything worthwhile takes hard work, time, and dedication.
Best Wishes,
-Charles Sledge
