Epi 108: Are You Causing Yourself to Fail? - Mindset Reset

Did you know that most people have a common failure pattern? Most people have strategies that they engage in that causes 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 week’s mindset reset. Kayla from the UK wrote, “Danielle, I often feel stuck. I’ve read books. I’ve worked with a therapist. I’ve listened to your podcasts 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 am unrealistic about how long change takes and constantly beat myself up. I am always failing. I can see this is a pattern for me, but I don’t know how to change it. Can you help?”

Knowing there are patterns in our lives that work against us is the first step to discovering how we can alter the practices.

Before we dive in, I want to say no one can fail all the time, at every moment, at everything. It’s not possible. The feeling of such is a belief you’ve created. And we want to remove that belief. The first step in doing so is to look at what I call anti-success strategies.

What is an anti-success strategy? They are patterns of behavior and thoughts that keep us in that sense of failure and away from meeting ourselves in our intentions and desires.

There are only three primary strategies that nearly everything falls into, and then I want to give you a quick reframing method to help you get out of this habit!

The first strategy comes down to belittling ourselves, our needs, and our achievements.

How many of us have an inner critic that loves to make drama in our lives? When we listen to the inner bad girl and refuse to own something we’ve done that supports our intentions and desires, guess what? We create a constant sense of nothing being good enough; we feel like we are constantly failing.

Carry a notebook for 3 to 5 days and write down all your negative thoughts about yourself. Write down when you belittle your efforts and your greatness or when you perceive that you are failing.

The next strategy is moving the goalposts.

What does that mean? It means you have a result in mind, you are focused on all the effort, knock down everything in your way and feel as if it was too easy, so you add more elements. You move the goalposts. While adapting your goal is okay when you’ve reached the desired result, you have to be careful to add to your desires in a realistic way.

Lastly, denial—not admitting what you want or need. Denial is actually a form of self-protection.

It’s beneficial to question the label of failure. We undoubtedly learn each time we quote “fail.” So the question becomes, is it good learning?

With this idea, let’s reframe failure and these anti-success strategies.

What does reframing do? It helps us see the experience from a new interpretation. We can reverse these patterns by first identifying where they may fail in our three areas.

We can break down the moment into a few questions:

For belittling – what about this thought or feeling is making me feel like a failure? What about this experience is making me uncomfortable?

For moving the goalposts – am I celebrating the 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?

For denial – am I keeping myself back in hopes of nothing causing more negative feelings or experiences? Why am I holding myself back?

When we reframe, we open ourselves up to the truth.

I’ll repeat it; you are not constantly failing. You may be using your greatness against yourself, but now you know. So, you can make small shifts and changes to help you move forward.

Thank you, Kayla, for the question. I challenge you to keep going in your growth journey, as I encourage you all to do the same! Honor where you are. Be in it. There’s greatness within and around you.

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