Are You Causing Yourself To Fail? A Mindset Reset

Did you know that most people have a common failure pattern? Most people have strategies that they engage in that cause them to struggle or even fail, even if they truly desire to win or have a positive outcome. Knowing your patterns are essential, and it’s the subject of this mindset reset.

Transcript

Did you know that most people have a common failure pattern?

Air quotes around failure,

Right?

It's true.

Most people have strategies that they engage in that causes them to struggle or even fail even if they desire to win or have their mind set on a positive outcome.

Knowing your patterns are important and it's the subject of this week's Mindset Reset.

Kayla from the UK wrote in and said,

Danielle,

I often feel stuck.

I've read books,

I've worked with a therapist,

I've listened to your podcast on being stuck,

But I keep wondering if the problem isn't actually me.

I spend a lot of my time thinking about how hard it is to make changes and then I stop myself from doing the work.

I know that I'm being unrealistic about how long it takes for change to take place and I'm constantly beating myself up.

I always feel like a failure.

I know this is a pattern for me but I just don't know how to change it.

Can you help?

Absolutely,

Kayla,

I can and knowing there's a pattern in our lives that work against us is the first step to discovering how we can alter our practices,

Our thoughts,

Our feelings,

And our emotions.

Before we dive in,

I want to say something that you may have heard me say,

You know,

Quite often but it's so true and it is this.

No one,

And I mean no one,

Has the ability to fail all of the time.

At every moment,

At anything that they do,

Or everything that they do,

It's simply not possible.

The feeling of such is a belief that you've created.

I am failing or I am a failure.

In order to progress in your life,

You have to remove that belief and the first step in doing so is to look at what I call anti-success strategies.

So what is an anti-success strategy?

It is exactly as it sounds,

Right?

They are patterns of behaviors,

Of thoughts,

Of feelings that keep us in this sense of failure and away from meeting ourselves in our true intentions and desires.

There's actually only three major strategies and of course there's a lot of things that go under it but let's talk about these three things that nearly everything that we do falls into when we're talking about feeling like a failure.

And when we get through that,

I want to give you a quick reframing ability so that you can get out of this habit,

This really unhelpful,

Unhealthy habit.

So the first strategy that most of us use against ourselves comes down to simply belittling ourselves.

It's belittling our needs or even our achievements.

How many of us have this inner critic that loves to create drama in our lives?

I know I've had it for a long time before I eradicated it out of my life and so many of the women that I have worked with and still work with deal with this on a daily basis.

That critic lies and it says,

You are not good enough,

You can't do this or when we receive a compliment we brush it off.

We say,

Oh it was nothing or it's not that big of a deal.

When we listen to that inner bad girl and not inner bad girl in a good way or we refuse to own something that we've done that would best support our intentions and desires,

Guess what?

We create a constant sense of nothing being good enough or that everything that we do is not good enough and then we always feel like we are failing.

We cannot have a constant stream of negative thoughts and feelings directed inward and live a life of making big positive steps forward or living a life of having wins.

It's just not possible so we have to check our inner dialogue.

I'm not gonna lie to you,

Many women hate this process.

It's a tough one but if you want to check that inner dialogue you should carry a notebook around for three to five days and write down the negative thoughts that you have about yourself.

Write down when you belittle your efforts and your greatness.

Write down when you perceive that you are failing.

What you are most likely to find at the end of this time period is that you have very similar thoughts all day long and those may likely be the actual feelings of failing and not necessarily action.

So you feel like you're failing because of the conversation you're having with yourself not because of the actions that you are taking and that's so important because if it's just the inner conversation but you're still showing up we can eradicate that feeling by eradicating the voice.

So important.

The next strategy is moving the goalpost.

I see this so often and again I have been guilty of it myself but one big way of always feeling like you're failing is to move the goalpost.

What does that mean?

It means that you have an end result in mind so you have the goal and you're focused you know all of the efforts all of the hurdles everything that you you know want to do and think about is focused on that end result and you knock it down really quickly right it becomes so easy that you hit that mark and at the end you turn around and think wow that was probably too easy and so you begin to add to the end goal.

You begin to think that you need to add something more because it shouldn't have been that easy and that process is moving the goalpost.

Okay and when you move the goalpost guess what happens?

We tend to overthink.

We tend to challenge ourselves to the point that we have zero ability to ever create the new desire.

We push ourselves to the point of obstacles that steals our ability to own our first outcome to own the effort to own the results and when we push ourselves so hard to create something new and we don't celebrate what was before us guess what we feel like we failed.

What is that sense of failure going to do?

It's going to ignite that inner dialogue.

It's going to wake up that inner bad girl and we are now in a cycle.

So we have to really check our ability to stay within our end results our end goal without moving the post before we celebrate the wins.

That's another element to all of this.

We are result oriented by nature and if we never celebrate the wins big or small it really doesn't matter.

We rarely have a sense of accomplishment.

This strategy has a way of taking over our lives and it's a big one that leaks into everything we think feel and do.

How many people have said you know if I just lost a little bit more weight I'd be happy or when things happen I will be happy.

If I went a little bit further I will celebrate then.

These are the things that push the goalpost.

Don't fall into this trap.

The feeling of failure is waiting at the bottom.

I promise you.

So the last one is denial.

So not admitting or giving yourself permission to own what you need and want.

Denial is actually a form of self-protection right so this is so important to understand.

Denying ourselves is this idea that if we limit ourselves we cannot fail.

So there's the protection.

I feel like if I do something big that I may actually fail so I'm going to hold that at bay.

We keep ourselves back from taking risk.

You know we don't want disappointment and we even keep ourselves stuck in relationships and work environments that don't work for us.

Denial is failure because we don't allow ourselves to have be or do what we wish and need.

What happens then?

We feel as if we never have a baseline for or to happiness.

Denial is something that is really really nasty.

It's something that keeps us in our comfort zones.

It's in a place that really can own us.

So we want to make sure that we're not denying what we need and want.

It's also really useful to question this label of failure that we have.

If you look at failure itself we really do learn every time that we have an experience that we quote fail.

The question becomes is it good learning?

If we fail and then use it against ourselves of course that's not good learning but if we fail and create new belief systems new conscious efforts and thought patterns we refuse to lean into self-blame and worthiness guess what we actually can create a sense of accomplishment out of the failure.

But we have to ask is this really failure?

So this is where I want you to think about your definition of failure.

What does that mean to you?

You know it is a very personal experience to feel as if you failed and for most of us we have this idea that perfection is our end goal but again the only time or the only way that perfection can actually be defined is by the individual holder of the definition.

You know with this idea with this understanding I want us to reframe failure and these anti-success strategies.

If you've listened to me on the podcast or on Instagram or TikTok or on my website you may have heard me walk you through this process with our thoughts but we can actually do the very same thing with our feelings and we do it with questions.

So what does reframing do for us?

It helps us see the experience from a new interpretation.

It's like being our own bestie and giving ourselves advice right?

It helps us think from the beginning of the thought feeling or action to determine if we miss something or if this is a pattern or maybe even just a moment.

An everyday example of this would be like realizing that something didn't pan out the way that we had hoped but it's actually an opportunity for something better.

That is reframing right?

So we had a failure or something didn't work out but now we know something more is on its way.

Or using a different word when it comes to a thought like I failed where you switch that to I didn't hit my goal yet.

The idea of yet leaves the door open to create a new outcome.

We can reverse these patterns by first identifying where we may fall into that area of three.

So do we fall into the belittling or the goalpost moving or denial?

And then we can ask ourselves some questions.

I'm going to give you a couple so that you can kind of see how the reframing works.

In the terms of belittling we could say what about this thought or feeling is making me feel like a failure?

What about this experience is uncomfortable for me?

For moving the goalpost we can say am I celebrating my first goal before I move forward?

Will moving the goalpost benefit me or should I stop and allow the next part of my plan to unfold naturally instead of pushing or efforting?

For denial you could ask am I keeping myself back in hopes of nothing causing more negative feelings or experiences?

Or am I holding myself back to begin with?

If you need another perspective on anything put it into another setting and see how it looks.

So I am a failure.

Take a look at that from another viewpoint.

If this was someone else that was taking action how would you feel about it?

What would you say to them?

Give yourself another vantage point.

When we reframe we open ourselves up to the truth.

We realize that we're not always failing but perhaps we are stopping ourselves or perhaps we're not celebrating ourselves or perhaps that inner bad girl has taken over and we're a failure because she likes drama.

Perhaps we are not allowing ourselves to do what we need and therefore we are stuck and feeling like we're constantly failing.

I'll say it again you are not failing.

You may be using your greatness against yourself but now that you know you can change the pattern.

You can make small shifts and give yourself the ability to move forward.

I hope this helps.

Kayla thank you for the question.

I'm gonna challenge you to keep going in your growth journey.

I hope that you see that you're not always failing.

I encourage everyone else to do the same.

Honor where you are.

Be in your life.

There's greatness within and around you.

You're not failing 100% of the time.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode which originally aired on the Get Your Life Together Girl podcast.

Please take the time to review this conversation and follow me here on Insight Timer for more courses,

Meditations,

And additional conversations.

Until next time,

Be kind to yourself and others.

Reviews

Thank you for sharing your knowledge here . It is very informative and very helpful .
Very grateful ❤️🙏