Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You do not fail overnight. Failure is the inevitable result of an accumulation of poor thinking and poor choices. To put it more simply, failure is nothing more than a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.You make errors in judgment and then foolishly repeat them every day because you don’t think that it matters. Our daily acts do not seem that important. A minor oversight, a poor decision or a wasted hour generally doesn’t result in an instant and measurable impact.
If you haven’t read a book during the past ninety days, then this lack of discipline doesn’t seem to have any immediate impact on your life. Since nothing drastic happened, you repeat this error in judgment for another ninety days and into the future. The reason is that it doesn’t seem to matter, and, herein, lies the great danger. Far worse than not reading books is not even realizing that it matters!
Those who eat too much of the wrong foods, smoke too much or drink too much are contributing to a future health problem, but the joy of the moment overshadows the consequence of the future. It does not seem to matter. Consequences are seldom instant; instead, they accumulate until the inevitable day of reckoning finally arrives and the price must be paid for poor choices – choices that didn’t seem to matter.
Failure’s most dangerous attribute is its subtlety. In fact, sometimes, these accumulated errors in judgment occur throughout a period of great joy and prosperity. Since nothing terrible happens – no instant consequences to capture our attention – you simply drift from one day to the next, repeating the errors, thinking the wrong thoughts, listening to the wrong voices and making the wrong choices.
To counteract these errors, you must become better educated!
If, at the end of the day, when you made your first error in judgment, the sky had not fallen, then, undoubtedly, you would have taken immediate steps to ensure that the act would never be repeated again. Like the child who places his hand on a hot burner despite his parents’ warnings, you would have had instantaneous feedback to never make that mistake again.
Unfortunately, failure does not shout its warnings, as your parents once did. This is why it is imperative to refine your philosophy to make better choices. With a powerful, personal philosophy guiding your every step, you become more aware of your errors in judgment and that each error really does matter.
The great news is that just like the formula for failure is easy to follow, so is the formula for success. It’s a few simple disciplines practiced every day.
How can you change the errors in the formula for failure into the disciplines required for the formula for success? The answer is by making the future an important part of your current philosophy.
Both success and failure involve future consequences. If this is true, then why don’t more people take time to ponder the future? The answer is simple: They are so focused on the current moment that it doesn’t seem to matter. The problems and rewards of today are so absorbing that some people never pause long enough to think about tomorrow.
If you could develop a new discipline to look a little further down the road, which would only take a few minutes a day, then you would be able to foresee the impending consequences of your current conduct. Armed with that valuable information, you could discipline yourself to see the future in advance, change your thinking, amend your errors and develop new, success-oriented disciplines.
One of the exciting things about the formula for success – a few simple disciplines practiced every day – is that the results are almost immediate. As you voluntarily change daily errors to daily disciplines, you experience positive results in a very short period of time. When you start exercising, you feel a new vitality almost immediately. When you begin reading, you experience a growing awareness and a new level of self-confidence. Any new discipline you begin to practice daily will produce exciting results that will drive you to become even better at developing new disciplines.
The real magic of new disciplines is that they will cause you to amend your thinking. If you were to start today to try harder, and make a conscious and consistent effort to change subtle and deadly errors into constructive and rewarding disciplines, then you would never again settle for a life of existence – not once you have tasted the fruits of a life of substance!
