فصل 9

Chapter NINE

The Failure Mechanism: How to Make It Work for You Instead of Against You Steam boilers have pressure gauges that show when the pressure is reaching the danger point. By recognizing the potential danger, corrective action can be taken—and safety assured. Dead-end streets, blind alleys, and impassable roads can cause you inconvenience and delay your arrival at your destination if they are not clearly marked and recognized for what they are. However, if you can read the signposts, and take proper corrective action, detour signs, dead-end street signs, and the like can help you reach your destination easier and more efficiently.

The human body has its own “red light” signals and “danger signs,” which doctors refer to as symptoms or syndromes. Patients are prone to regard symptoms as malevolent; a fever, a pain, etc., is “bad.” Actually, these negative signals function for the patient, and for his benefit, if he recognizes them for what they are, and takes corrective action. They are the pressure gauges and red lights that help maintain the body in health. The pain of appendicitis may seem bad to the patient, but actually it operates for the patient’s survival. If he felt no pain he would take no action toward having the appendix removed.

The failure-type personality also has its symptoms. We need to be able to recognize these failure symptoms in ourselves so that we can do something about them. When we learn to recognize certain personality traits as signposts to failure, these symptoms then act automatically as negative feedback. However, we not only need to become “aware” of them, but we also need to recognize them as “undesirables,” as things that we do not want, and most important of all convince ourselves deeply and sincerely that these things do not bring happiness.

No one is immune to these negative feelings and attitudes. Even the most successful personalities experience them at times. The important thing is to recognize them for what they are, and take positive action to correct course.

The Picture of Failure

Again, I have found that patients can remember these negative feedback signals, or what I call the “Failure Mechanism,” when they associate them with the letters that make up the word “failure.” They are: Frustration, hopelessness, futility

Aggressiveness (misdirected)

Insecurity

Loneliness (lack of “oneness”)

Uncertainty

Resentment

Emptiness

Understanding Brings Cure

No one sits down and deliberately, with malice aforethought, decides to develop these negative traits just to be perverse. They do not “just happen.” Nor are they an indication of the imperfection of human nature. Each of these negatives was originally adopted as a way to solve a difficulty or a problem. We adopt them because we mistakenly see them as a way out of some difficulty. They have meaning and purpose, although based on a mistaken premise. They constitute a way of life for us. Remember, one of the strongest urges in human nature is to react appropriately. We can cure these failure symptoms, not by willpower, but by understanding—by being able to see that they do not work and that they are inappropriate.

The truth can set us free from them. And when we can see the truth, then the same instinctive forces that caused us to adopt them in the first place, will work in our behalf in eradicating them.

Frustration

Frustration is an emotional feeling that develops whenever some important goal cannot be realized or when some strong desire is thwarted. All of us must necessarily suffer some frustration by the very fact of being human and therefore imperfect, incomplete, unfinished. As we grow older we should learn that all desires cannot be satisfied immediately. We also learn that our “doing” can never be as good as our intentions. We also learn to accept the fact that perfection is neither necessary nor required, and that approximations are good enough for all practical purposes. We learn to tolerate a certain amount of frustration without becoming upset about it.

It is only when a frustrating experience brings excessive emotional feelings of deep dissatisfaction and futility that it becomes a symptom of failure.

Chronic frustration usually means that the goals we have set for ourselves are unrealistic, or the image we have of ourselves is inadequate, or both.

PRACTICAL GOALS VS. PERFECTIONISTIC GOALS

To his friends, Jim S. was a successful man. He had risen from stock clerk to vice president of his company. His golf score was in the low 80s. He had a beautiful wife and two children who loved him. But, nevertheless, he felt chronically frustrated because none of these measured up to his unrealistic goals. He himself was not perfect in every particular, but he should be. He should be chairman of the board by now. He should be shooting in the low seventies. He should be such a perfect husband and father that his wife would never find cause to disagree with him, and his children never misbehave. Hitting the bull’s-eye was not good enough. He had to hit the infinitesimal speck in the center of the bull’s-eye. “You should use the same technique in all your affairs that Jackie Burke recommends in putting,” I told him. “That is not to feel that you have to pinpoint the ball right to the cup itself on a long putt, but to aim at an area the size of a washtub. This takes off the strain, relaxes you, enables you to perform better. If it’s good enough for the professionals, it should be good enough for you.” HIS SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY MADE FAILURE CERTAIN

Harry N. was somewhat different. He had won none of the external symbols of success. Yet he had had many opportunities, all of which he muffed. Three times he had been on the verge of landing the job he wanted and each time “something happened”—something was always defeating him just when success seemed within his grasp. Twice he had been disappointed in love affairs.

His self-image was that of an unworthy, incompetent, inferior person who had no right to succeed, or to enjoy the better things in life, and unwittingly he tried to be true to that role. He felt he was not the sort of person to be successful and always managed to do something to make this self-fulfilling prophecy come true.

FRUSTRATION AS A WAY OF SOLVING PROBLEMS DOES NOT WORK

Expressing frustration, discontent, or dissatisfaction is a way of responding to problems that we all “learned” as infants. If an infant is hungry he expresses discontent by crying. A warm, tender hand then appears magically out of nowhere and brings milk. If he is uncomfortable, he again expresses his dissatisfaction with the status quo, and the same warm hands appear magically again and solve his problem by making him comfortable. Many children continue to get their way, and have their problems solved by overindulgent parents, by merely expressing their feelings of frustration. All they have to do is feel frustrated and dissatisfied and the problem is solved. This way of life “works” for the infant and for some small children. It does not work in adult life. Yet many of us continue to try it, by feeling discontented and expressing our grievances against life, apparently in the hope that life itself will take pity—rush in and solve our problem for us—if only we feel badly enough. Jim S. was unconsciously using this childish technique in the hope that some magic would bring him the perfection he craved. Harry N. had practiced feeling frustrated and defeated so much that feelings of defeat became habitual with him. He projected them into the future and expected to fail. His habitual defeatist feelings helped create a picture of himself as a defeated person. Thoughts and feelings go together. Feelings are the soil that thoughts and ideas grow in. This is the reason that you have been advised throughout this book to imagine how you would feel if you succeeded—and then feel that way now.

Aggressiveness

Excessive and misdirected aggressiveness follows frustration as night follows day. This was proved conclusively by a group of Yale scientists many years ago in their book Frustration and Aggressiveness.

Aggressiveness itself is not an abnormal behavior pattern as some psychiatrists once believed. Aggressiveness—along with emotional steam—is very necessary in reaching a goal. We must go out after what we want in an aggressive rather than in a defensive or tentative manner. We must grapple with problems aggressively. The mere fact of having an important goal is enough to create emotional steam in our boiler and bring aggressive tendencies into play. However, trouble ensues when we are blocked or frustrated in achieving our goal. The emotional steam is then dammed up, seeking an outlet. Misdirected, or unused, it becomes a destructive force. The worker who wants to punch his boss in the nose, but doesn’t dare, goes home and snaps at his wife and kids or kicks the cat. Or he may turn his aggressiveness upon himself in much the same way that a certain scorpion in South America will sting itself and die of its own poison when angered.

DON’T LASH OUT BLINDLY: CONCENTRATE YOUR FIRE

The failure-type personality does not direct his aggressiveness toward the accomplishment of a worthwhile goal. Instead it is used in such self-destructive channels as ulcers, high blood pressure, worry, excessive smoking, and compulsive overwork; or it may be turned on other persons in the form of irritability, rudeness, gossip, nagging, fault-finding.

Or, if his goals are unrealistic and impossible, the solution of this type person, when he meets defeats, is to “try harder than ever.” When he finds that he is butting his head up against a stone wall, he unconsciously figures that the solution to his problem is to butt his head even harder.

The answer to aggression is not to eradicate it, but to understand it, and provide proper and appropriate channels for its expression. Dr. Konrad Lorenz, the famous Viennese doctor and animal sociologist, told psychiatrists at the Postgraduate Center for Psychotherapy (now the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health), in New York City, that the study of animal behavior for many years has shown that aggressive behavior is basic and fundamental, and that an animal cannot feel or express affection until channels have been provided for the expression of aggression. Dr. Emanuel K. Schwartz, then assistant dean of the center, said that Dr. Lorenz’s discoveries have tremendous implications for man and may require us to reevaluate our total view of human relations. They indicate, he said, that providing a proper outlet for aggression is as important, if not more so, than providing for love and tenderness.

KNOWLEDGE GIVES YOU POWER

Merely understanding the mechanism involved helps a person handle the frustration-aggression cycle. Misdirected aggression is an attempt to hit one target (the original goal) by lashing out at any target. It doesn’t work. You don’t solve one problem by creating another. If you feel like snapping at someone, stop and ask yourself—“Is this merely my own frustration at work? What has frustrated me?” When you see that your response is inappropriate, you have gone a long way toward controlling it. It also takes much of the sting away, when someone is rude to you, if you realize that it is probably not a willful act, but an automatic mechanism at work. The other fellow is letting off steam that he could not use in achieving some goal. Many automobile accidents are caused by the frustration-aggression mechanism. The next time someone is rude to you in traffic, try this: Instead of becoming aggressive and thus a menace yourself, say to yourself: “The poor fellow has nothing against me personally. Maybe he burned the toast this morning, he can’t pay the rent, or his boss chewed him out.” SAFETY VALVES FOR EMOTIONAL STEAM

When you are blocked in achieving some important goal, you are somewhat like a steam locomotive with a full head of steam with nowhere to go. You need a safety valve for your excess of emotional steam. All types of physical exercise are excellent for draining off aggression. Long brisk walks, push-ups, and dumbbell exercises are good. Especially good are those games where you hit or smash something—golf, tennis, bowling, punching the bag. Many frustrated people intuitively recognize the value of heavy muscular exercise in draining off aggressiveness when they feel an urge to rearrange all the furniture in the house after becoming upset. Another good device is to vent your spleen in writing. Write a letter to the person who has frustrated or angered you. Pull out all the stops. Leave nothing to the imagination. Then burn the letter.

The best channel of all for aggression is to use it up as it was intended to be used—in working toward some goal. Work remains one of the best therapies, and one of the best tranquilizers for a troubled spirit.

Opening up the valves and letting off steam is also done through such practices as the martial arts—but in much greater detail with the so-called internal martial arts, such as Tai Chi, Aikido, and Systema. In these practices you not only consciously engage the body, you also tune in to your breathing and learn to relax the tension from your muscles. Most physical activities, even though they help by being a positive outlet for aggression, do not cover how to relax and breathe, skills that you can bring with you throughout the day into everything you do.

Insecurity

The feeling of insecurity is based on a concept or belief of inner inadequacy. If you feel that you do not “measure up” to what is required, you feel insecure. A great deal of insecurity is not due to the fact that our inner resources are actually inadequate, but due to the fact that we use a false measuring stick. We compare our actual abilities to an imagined “ideal,” perfect, or absolute self. Thinking of yourself in terms of absolutes induces insecurity.

The insecure person feels that he should be good—period. He should be successful—period. He should be happy, competent, poised—period. These are all worthy goals. But they should be thought of, at least in their absolute sense, as goals to be achieved, as something to reach for, rather than as shoulds.

Since man is a goal-striving mechanism, the self realizes itself fully only when man is moving forward toward something. Remember our comparison with the bicycle in a previous chapter? Man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward—or seeking. When you think of yourself as having attained the goal, you become static, and you lose the security and equilibrium you had when you were moving toward something. The man who is convinced that he is “good” in the absolute sense, not only has no incentive to do better, but he feels insecure because he must defend the sham and pretense. “The man who thinks that he has ‘arrived’ has about used up his usefulness to us,” the president of a large business said to me recently. When someone called Jesus “good,” he admonished him, “Why callest thou me good? There is but one good and that is the Father.” St. Paul is generally regarded as a “good” man, yet his own attitude was “I count myself not to have achieved . . . but I press on toward the goal.” KEEP YOUR FEET ON SOLID GROUND

Trying to stand on the top of a pinnacle is insecure. Mentally, get down off your high horse and you will feel more secure.

This has very practical applications. It explains the underdog psychology in sports. When a championship team begins to think of itself as “the champions,” they no longer have something to fight for, but a status to defend. The champions are defending something, trying to prove something. The underdogs are fighting to do something and often bring about an upset.

I used to know a boxer who fought well until he won the championship. In his next fight he lost the championship and looked bad doing so. After losing the title, he fought well again and regained the championship. A wise manager said to him, “You can fight as well as champion as when you’re the contender if you’ll remember one thing. When you step into that ring you aren’t defending the championship—you’re fighting for it. You haven’t got it—you’ve laid it on the line when you crawl through the ropes.” The mental attitude that engenders insecurity is a “way.” It is a way of substituting sham and pretense for reality. It is a way of proving to yourself and others your superiority. But it is self-defeating. If you are perfect and superior now—then there is no need to fight, grapple, and try. In fact, if you are caught trying real hard, it may be considered evidence that you are not superior—so you don’t try. You lose your fight—your will to win.

Loneliness

All of us are lonely at times. Again, it is a natural penalty we pay for being human and individual. But it is the extreme and chronic feeling of loneliness—of being cut off and alienated from other people—that is a symptom of the failure mechanism.

This type of loneliness is caused by an alienation from life. It is a loneliness from your real self. The person who is alienated from his real self has cut himself off from the basic and fundamental “contact” with life. The lonely person often sets up a vicious cycle. Because of his feeling of alienation from self, human contacts are not very satisfying, and he becomes a social recluse. In doing so, he cuts himself off from one of the pathways to finding himself, which is to lose oneself in social activities with other people. Doing things with other people, and enjoying things with other people, helps us to forget ourselves. In stimulating conversation, dancing, playing together, or working together for a common goal, we become interested in something other than maintaining our own shams and pretenses. As we get to know the other fellow, we feel less need for pretense. We “unthaw” and become more natural. The more we do this the more we feel we can afford to dispense with the sham and pretense and feel more comfortable just being ourselves.

LONELINESS IS A “WAY” THAT DOESN’T WORK

Loneliness is a way of self-protection. Lines of communication with other people—and especially any emotional ties—are cut down. It is a way to protect our idealized self against exposure, hurt, humiliation. The lonely personality is afraid of other people. The lonely person often complains that he has no friends, and there are no people to mix with. In most cases, he unwittingly arranges things in this manner because of his passive attitude, that it is up to other people to come to him, to make the first move, to see that he is entertained. It never occurs to him that he should contribute something to any social situation.

Regardless of your feelings, force yourself to mix and mingle with other people. After the first cold plunge, you will find yourself warming up and enjoying it if you persist. Develop some social skill that will add to the happiness of other people: dancing, bridge, playing the piano, tennis, conversation. It is an old psychological axiom that constant exposure to the object of fear immunizes against the fear. As the lonely person continues to force himself into social relations with other human beings—not in a passive way, but as an active contributor—he will gradually find that most people are friendly, and that he is accepted. His shyness and timidity begin to disappear. He feels more comfortable in the presence of other people and with himself. The experience of their acceptance of him enables him to accept himself.

Uncertainty

The greatest mistake a man can make is to be afraid of making one.

—Elbert Hubbard

Uncertainty is a way of avoiding mistakes, and responsibility. It is based on the fallacious premise that if no decision is made, nothing can go wrong. Being “wrong” holds untold horrors to the person who tries to conceive of himself as perfect. He is never wrong, and always perfect in all things. If he were ever wrong, his picture of a perfect, all-powerful self would crumble. Therefore, decision-making becomes a life-or-death matter.

One “way” is to avoid as many decisions as possible, and prolong them as much as possible. Another “way” is to have a handy scapegoat to blame. This type of person makes decisions—but he makes them hastily, prematurely, and is well known for going off half-cocked. Making decisions offers him no problem at all. He is perfect. It is impossible for him to be wrong in any case. Therefore, why consider facts or consequences? He is able to maintain this fiction when his decisions backfire, simply by convincing himself it was someone else’s fault. It is easy to see why both types fail. One is continually in hot water from impulsive and ill-considered actions; the other is stymied because he will not act at all. In other words, the uncertainty way of being right doesn’t work.

NOBODY IS RIGHT ALL THE TIME

Realize that it is not required that a man be 100 percent right at all times. No baseball batter has ever had a 1000 average. If he is right three times out of ten he is considered good. The great Babe Ruth, who held the record for the most home runs for many years, also held the record for the most strikeouts. It is in the nature of things that we progress by acting, making mistakes, and correcting course. A guided torpedo literally arrives at its target by making a series of mistakes and continually correcting its course. You cannot correct your course if you are standing still. You cannot change or correct “nothing.” You must consider the known facts in a situation, imagine possible consequences of various courses of action, choose one that seems to offer the best solution—and bet on it. You can correct your course as you go.

ONLY LITTLE MEN ARE NEVER WRONG

Another help in overcoming uncertainty is to realize the role that self-esteem, and the protection of self-esteem, play in indecisiveness. Many people are indecisive because they fear loss of self-esteem if they are proved wrong. Use self-esteem for yourself, instead of against yourself, by convincing yourself of this truth: Big men and big personalities make mistakes and admit them. It is the little man who is afraid to admit he has been wrong.

No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.

—William E. Gladstone

I have learned more from my mistakes than from my successes.

— Sir Humphry Davy

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success; we often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

—Samuel Smiles

Mr. Edison worked endlessly on a problem, using the method of elimination. If a person asked him whether he were discouraged because so many attempts proved unavailing, he would say, “No, I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” —Mrs. Thomas A. Edison

Resentment

When the failure-type personality looks for a scapegoat or excuse for his failure, he often blames society, “the system,” life, “the breaks.” He resents the success and happiness of others because it is proof to him that life is shortchanging him and he is being treated unfairly. Resentment is an attempt to make our own failure palatable by explaining it in terms of unfair treatment, injustice. But, as a salve for failure, resentment is a cure that is worse than the disease. It is a deadly poison to the spirit, makes happiness impossible, uses up tremendous energy that could go into accomplishment. A vicious cycle is often set up. The person who always carries a grievance, and has a chip on his shoulder, does not make the best companion or coworker. When coworkers do not warm up to him, or the boss attempts to point out deficiencies in his work, he has additional reasons for feeling resentful.

RESENTMENT IS A “WAY” THAT FAILS

Resentment is also a way of making us feel important. Many people get a perverse satisfaction from feeling “wronged.” The victim of injustice, the one who has been unfairly treated, is morally superior to those who caused the injustice.

Resentment is also a “way,” or an attempt, to wipe out or eradicate a real or fancied wrong or injustice that has already happened. The resentful person is trying to “prove his case” before the court of life, so to speak. If he can feel resentful enough, and thereby “prove” the injustice, some magic process will reward him by making “not so” the event or circumstance that caused the resentment. In this sense resentment is a mental resistance to, a non-acceptance of, something which has already happened. The word itself comes from two Latin words: re meaning “back,” and sentire meaning “to feel.” Resentment is an emotional rehashing, or refighting, of some event in the past. You cannot win, because you are attempting to do the impossible—change the past.

RESENTMENT CREATES AN INFERIOR SELF-IMAGE

Resentment, even when based on real injustices and wrongs, is not the way to win. It soon becomes an emotional habit. Habitually feeling that you are a victim of injustice, you begin to picture yourself in the role of a victimized person. You carry around an inner feeling that is looking for an external peg to hang itself on. It is then easy to see so called evidence of injustice, or fancy you have been wronged, in the most innocent remark or neutral circumstance.

Habitual resentment invariably leads to self-pity, which is the worst possible emotional habit anyone can develop. When these habits have become firmly ensconced, a person does not feel “right” or “natural” when resentments are absent. They then literally begin to search for and look for “injustices.” Someone has said that such people feel good only when they are miserable.

Emotional habits of resentment and self-pity also go with an ineffective, inferior self-image. You begin to picture yourself as a pitiful person, a victim, who was meant to be unhappy.

THE REAL CAUSE OF RESENTMENT

Remember that your resentment is not caused by other persons, events, or circumstances. It is caused by your own emotional response—your own reaction. You alone have power over this, and you can control it if you firmly convince yourself that resentment and self-pity are not ways to happiness and success, but ways to defeat and unhappiness.

As long as you harbor resentment, it is literally impossible for you to picture yourself as a self-reliant, independent, self-determining person who is “the captain of his soul, the master of his fate.” The resentful person turns over his reins to other people. They are allowed to dictate how he shall feel, how he shall act. He is wholly dependent on other people, just as a beggar is. He makes unreasonable demands and claims on other people. If everyone else should be dedicated to making you happy, you will be resentful when it doesn’t work out that way. If you feel that other people “owe” you eternal gratitude, undying appreciation, or continual recognition of your superlative worth, you will feel resentment when these “debts” are not paid. If life owes you a living, you become resentful when it isn’t forthcoming.

Resentment is therefore inconsistent with creative goal-striving. In creative goal-striving you are the actor, not the passive recipient. You set your goals. No one owes you anything. You go out after your own goals. You become responsible for your own success and happiness. Resentment doesn’t fit into this picture, and because it doesn’t it is a Failure Mechanism.

Emptiness

Perhaps as you read this chapter you thought of someone who had been “successful” in spite of frustration, misdirected aggressiveness, resentment, etc. But do not be too sure. Many people acquire the outward symbols of success, but when they go to open the long-sought-for treasure chest, they find it empty. It is as if the money they have strained so hard to attain turns to counterfeit in their hands. Along the way, they lost the capacity to enjoy. And when you have lost the capacity to enjoy, no amount of wealth or anything else can bring success or happiness. These people win the nut of success but when they crack it open it is empty.

A person who has the capacity to enjoy still alive within him finds enjoyment in many ordinary and simple things in life. He also enjoys whatever success in a material way he has achieved. The person in whom the capacity to enjoy is dead can find enjoyment in nothing. No goal is worth working for. Life is a terrible bore. Nothing is worthwhile. You can see these people by the hundreds night after night knocking themselves out in nightclubs trying to convince themselves they are enjoying it. They travel from place to place, become entangled in a whirl of parties, hoping to find enjoyment, always finding an empty shell. The truth is that joy is an accompaniment of creative function, of creative goal-striving. It is possible to win a fake “success,” but when you do you are penalized with an empty joy.

LIFE BECOMES WORTHWHILE WHEN YOU HAVE WORTHWHILE GOALS

Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively. You either have no goal that is important enough to you, or you are not using your talents and efforts in striving toward an important goal. It is the person who has no purpose of his own who pessimistically concludes, “Life has no purpose.” It is the person who has no goal worth working for who concludes, “Life is not worthwhile.” It is the person with no important job to do who complains, “There is nothing to do.” The individual who is actively engaged in a struggle, or in striving toward an important goal, does not come up with pessimistic philosophies concerning the meaninglessness or the futility of life.

EMPTINESS IS NOT A “WAY” THAT WINS

The failure mechanism is self-perpetuating, unless we step in and break the vicious cycle. Emptiness, when once experienced, can become a way of avoiding effort, work, and responsibility. It becomes an excuse, or a justification, for noncreative living. If all is vanity, if there is no new thing under the sun, if there is no joy to be found anyway—why bother? Why try? If life is just a treadmill—if we work eight hours a day so we can afford a house to sleep in, so we can sleep eight hours to become rested for another day’s work—why get excited about it? All these intellectual “reasons” vanish, however, and we do experience joy and satisfaction, when once we get off the treadmill, stop going around and around in circles, and select some goal worth striving for—and go after it.

EMPTINESS AND AN INADEQUATE SELF-IMAGE GO TOGETHER

Emptiness may also be the symptom of an inadequate self-image. It is impossible to psychologically accept something that you feel does not belong to you—or is not consistent with your self. The person who holds an unworthy and undeserving self-image may hold his negative tendencies in check long enough to achieve a genuine success—then be unable to accept it psychologically and enjoy it. He may even feel guilty about it as if he had stolen it. His negative self-image may even spur such a person on to achievement by the well-known principle of overcompensation. But I do not subscribe to the theory that one should be proud of his inferiority complex, or thankful for it, because it sometimes leads to the external symbols of success. When “success” finally comes, such a person feels little sense of satisfaction or accomplishment. He is unable to “take credit” in his own mind for his accomplishments. To the world he is a success. He himself still feels inferior, undeserving, almost as if he were a thief and had stolen the “status symbols” that he thought were so important. “If my friends and associates really knew what a phony I am . . . ,” he will say.

This reaction is so common that psychiatrists refer to it as the “success syndrome”—the man who feels guilty, insecure, and anxious when he realizes he has “succeeded.” This is the reason that “success” has become a bad word. Real success never hurt anyone. It is healthy to strive for goals that are important to you, not as status symbols, but because they are consistent with your own deep inner wants. Striving for real success—for your success—through creative accomplishment, brings a deep inner satisfaction. Striving for a phony success to please others brings a phony satisfaction.

Glance at Negatives, but Focus on Positives

Automobiles come equipped with negative indicators placed directly in front of the driver, to tell you when the battery is not charging, when the engine is becoming too hot, when the oil pressure is becoming too low, etc. To ignore these negatives might ruin your car. However, there is no need to become unduly upset if some negative signal flashes. You merely stop at a service station or a garage, and take positive action to correct. A negative signal does not mean the car is no good. All cars overheat at times.

However, the driver of the automobile does not look at the control panel exclusively and continuously. To do so might be disastrous. He must focus his gaze through the windshield, look where he is going, and keep his primary attention on his goal—where he wants to go. He merely glances at the negative indicators from time to time. When he does, he does not fix upon them or dwell upon them. He quickly focuses his sight ahead of him again and concentrates on the positive goal of where he wants to go.

How to Use Negative Thinking

We should adopt a somewhat similar attitude about our own negative symptoms. I am a firm believer in “negative thinking” when used correctly. We need to be aware of negatives so that we can steer clear of them. A golfer needs to know where the bunkers and sand traps are—but he doesn’t think continuously about the bunker, where he doesn’t want to go. His mind “glances” at the bunker, but dwells upon the green. Used correctly this type of “negative thinking” can work for us to lead us to success, if:

(1) We are sensitive to the negative to the extent that it can alert us to danger.

(2) We recognize the negative for what it is—something undesirable, something we don’t want, something that does not bring genuine happiness.

(3) We take immediate corrective action and substitute an opposite positive factor from the Success Mechanism. Such practice will in time create a sort of automatic reflex that becomes a part of our inner guidance system. Negative feedback will act as a sort of automatic control, to help us “steer clear” of failure and guide us to success.