by Scott Allan
Forgiveness is the path that leads to a peaceful existence, not only for you but for others as well. It is the solution to moving beyond the suffering inflicted by resentment and regret.
Forgiveness eliminates pain and guilt, isolation and anger. It replaces these emotions with acceptance and silences the mind. When you forgive someone else for a perceived wrongdoing or for hurting you, a sliver of light opens up in your consciousness, enabling you to introduce change.
If you take this quantum leap and practice forgiving yourself, you will move into a higher state of consciousness. This will place you in a position of personal empowerment and create a new passage for positive events of the future. Although resentment and regret holds you back, forgiveness propels you forward. It cures all ills of fear, doubt, and confusion.
By relinquishing your connection with the past deeds and outcomes that cannot be altered, you seek to create new opportunities and increase your chances of achieving success. Instead of recreating and reliving the past, you open up higher realms of thought. This expands to creating a greater positive outflow of energy and helps you find fulfillment.
Forgiveness is a positive step toward releasing the pain that you’ve been holding onto. You don’t have to forget what has happened, but by undertaking the courageous act of forgiving someone, you are giving yourself and the other person the permission to move on, to let go, and to heal. Forgiving extricates you from playing the role of a weak victim and empowers you to take the path of the courageous.
Just as you choose to resent someone for the harm and hurt they caused, you can choose to forgive the outcome. It takes a big-hearted person to forgive and to practice forgiveness. People who choose to remain in a state of bitter resentment also remain small in character. Forgiveness is a win-win situation in which everyone benefits.
Action Plan
Do you have any deep-seated resentment toward a person, place, or event that happened in your life? How can you release this resentment and anger? Does it make you feel good to harbor this resentment or do you feel a deep sense of suffering? Follow the steps mentioned in this chapter to conduct a regular inventory every few months.
Write about a major life event or relationship from the past. How did this change you?
How much time and energy do you spend thinking about past events, trauma, and relationships? Do these memories fill you with positive or negative energy? How do you feel about your life in general?
Are you deeply satisfied with where you are today? If the answer is no, what are you going to do about it?
If you were given the chance to alter any past event or deed, what would it be? Why would you choose to change this event? If this event hadn’t occurred, would your life be different today? If so, how would it be different? More importantly, how do you know your life would have turned out better?
CHAPTER NINE
Turning Failure into Victory
“There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.”
— Frank McKinney
Excuses are false justifications created to convince us why we can’t live the way we want to. This is a powerful form of self-deception—a lie within a lie that keeps us trapped. Excuses that support our failures are based on a foundation of false beliefs.
Nothing is possible when you are afraid to try new things or explore possibilities. This level of fear seeks to destroy all potential for growth and development.
Created through multiple fears—the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of success, the fear of living, the fear of change, or the fear of not measuring up to expectations—we allow pathways of negativity to have absolute control over our lives.
If you believe in the reasons you can’t, you will never be successful in discovering what you can do when a shift in perspective or attitude takes place.
But there is a way to overcome and defeat this. By talking back with confidence and taking action against voices of self-doubt, excuses lose their power of reasoning. Once you stop creating excuses for why you can’t, you develop a new attitude and a new way of thinking.
When you develop the habit of thinking positively and turning every negative situation into a chance to expand and grow, the excuses no longer have any support to control your thoughts or actions. You are free to make positive choices that lead toward successful outcomes instead of failure.
The Iron Will
Failure is a part of living. Regardless of profession, wealth or social status, it happens to everyone. Failing is one of the prime necessities for self-development and growth.
The more chances you take to try different things, the more you increase the risk of failing. The only people I know of who never make mistakes or fail at something are those who never try anything different. They don’t accept new challenges or have the desire to be challenged in any way. They stay stuck, not because they can’t but by deciding they won’t. They follow the same routine every day and take as few risks as possible to avoid stumbling and looking foolish.
If you fall into this category, you might reduce your risk of failing, but you will never break through your own limitations, either. You create a comfort zone that eventually turns into a prison and significantly reduces your chances of achieving the level of success you desire.
Many of our failures have been painful and unforgettable. Relationships that never made it, bad investments, dead-end jobs or embarrassing moments that left you traumatized. It is so painful that our society has conjured up thousands of ways to avoid failing.
The message we have received is clear. Failure is not acceptable. People who fail are punished, held back, ridiculed, or rejected.
We fear looking bad, standing out as someone who never made it, or having to explain ourselves to others when we’re criticized for failing.
What is the secret of those who get what they want?
Read this statement and commit it to memory:
People who succeed in spite of failures are made of an iron will that few others possess. They keep trying. When one path doesn’t work, they try another. With every failure, they succeed because they are getting closer to achieving their goals.
Whatever we desire is within the realm of possibility, but our negative thinking supports the self-doubt that drives away chances of success. Negative thoughts create beliefs like, “I can’t do it” or “I’m not cut out for that” or “Someone else will come up with a better idea.” You have to eliminate this pattern of destructive thinking before it has time to complete its cycle.
The only way to defeat this habit is to replace the negative approach with more positive and effective solutions. Decide that no matter what difficulty you are facing, there is a way to succeed.
No matter the obstacle or challenge, you will face your darkest hour and persevere. It is this iron will that cuts through the fear and removes obstacles—the willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve a vision, to accomplish a magnificent goal, and to do everything you can to overcome self-defeat.
Excuses: Pathways to Failure
“Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.”
— Paulo Coelho
Forming excuses is a method used to avoid the fear of taking a risk. Instead of just going for it, people are too afraid to risk looking stupid, or damaging their egos through embarrassment. We would rather take the easy way out and make excuses.
The justifications created that force you to submit to passive inactivity are more damaging than the worst of all failures you could endure. The definition of a true failure isn’t someone who tried and never succeeded, but rather someone who never had the courage to try in the first place.
By failing to act, you produce the same results as if you had tried and failed. So, wouldn’t it be better to just give it a shot? Would you rather take a
chance and see what happens?
Failing to pursue the things you want in life is a failure in disguise. We use excuses to defend ourselves from the hurts of the world as we build walls that protect limited interests and fragile egos, and to preserve the limited field of vision through which we see the world. Your excuses for not pursuing your dreams might appear to be valid, but under the surface is a path that leads to false reasoning and bitter defeat.
Here are some of the excuses we use to convince ourselves that something just isn’t a good idea:
“I am too old for that.”
“It didn’t work for my friends or neighbors, so why should it work for me?”
“The initial investment is just too much. I can’t afford to lose that money.”
“I’ve been working at this job for twenty years, so it’s too late to change now.”
When you make excuses for not taking action, it strengthens your determination to follow the path of least resistance. The ego uses excuses to control your situation, whether you love it or hate it. A day will come when someone else will take the risk that you didn’t and they will succeed where you failed.
Their ultimate success will become your tragic failure. Their gain becomes your loss. They might stumble a few times before getting it right, but they will eventually get it, and they will prosper from the success you could have had.
“Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real.”
If you want to avoid this, the key is to not think about what you have to lose if you fail, but rather what you have to gain if you succeed. This shift in perception is powerful. One train of thought keeps you stuck in scarcity (I might lose what I have) and the other way of thinking focuses on abundance (I’ll gain so much if I succeed).
When it’s difficult or seemingly impossible to achieve your goal, make a list of the good things you will gain. Don’t give yourself permission to fail. Many people give up just short of the finish line, and they have no idea how close they were. Hang onto your vision until you’ve succeeded.
Make it a habit to avoid making excuses. Do not accept anything as being impossible to obtain until you’ve exhausted every known effort to succeed.
Create enough positive reasons as to why you should do it. If you find yourself making up multiple reasons why you can’t, step back and analyze how you feel at that moment. In many cases, these negative feelings influence the justifications we create.
You can change your excuses from words of weakness to words of power that inspire and encourage you to overcome your fears.
Talking Back to Your Excuses
The key to facing your personal fears is to take away the power of negative ideas and concepts by removing any unhealthy thoughts that have constructed a false reality. Talk back to your excuses.
These excuses are the same ones you’ve been using for years to keep the lies real. To avoid facing challenges and grasping opportunity, we create excuses as to why we can’t. This behavior of negative self-talk can be diverted with practice, eventually removed, and replaced with more positive, high-powered images of yourself taking on more proactive roles.
Too many people have grown old and realized they could have been more and done more, but fear held them back. Now the fear is a different kind—the fear of knowing they will never have the chance to do the things they always wanted to do.
Regret Before Dying
Bonnie Ware was a nurse who worked in palliative care for many years. Her patients were people who went home to die. Bonnie spent time with each one before they passed away. She asked them to share regrets they had during their life. Common themes emerged from the interviews. This was the core message many had in common:
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
When you reach the end of your life, will you look back without regret? If you have regrets, what are they? Is it too late to change these events?
The past cannot change, but we can make a difference today. What dreams have you been putting off? Are you still waiting for happiness instead of creating it for yourself?
Regardless of your age, it is never too late to do what you’ve always wanted to do. Remember you have the power to reinvent who you are at any given time. You can make priority decisions to live in a way that expresses fully who you are as an individual.
The terminal patients interviewed by Bonnie Ware held deep regrets for things they never did and fears that held them back. By failing to make choices that can change your destiny, you are setting yourself up for regret. Instead, choose to become your absolute best.
Your dreams are too important to fall victim to excuses. Start converting excuses into positive words of empowerment. You are not powerless; you wield great power from within.
Viktor Frankl’s Message
Viktor Frankl spent three years under the harshest conditions imaginable in the three worst holocaust camps from 1942 to 1945. His story is told in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning.
The greatest lesson Viktor spoke of states:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Regardless of what others do to us, how they act, or the harm they inflict, there is one constant truth: We are in control of our own mind and will.
By giving in and allowing others to control our emotions and thoughts, we are handing them the power to do as they want. We can’t always choose our environment or circumstances. But what we can do is choose how we react. Will you say yes, no, or nothing at all?
Will you act the part of a helpless victim or decide that you are stronger than any of life’s difficulties?
You can only be defeated when you make the choice to do nothing.
You have complete power over your attitude at all times. It is the one thing nobody can take from you. You might lose all your possessions, your home, and your freedom, but you’ll always have the right to choose how you respond to the situation.
The Power of Choice
“Some of our important choices have a time line. If we delay a decision, the opportunity is gone forever. Sometimes our doubts keep us from making a choice that involves change. Thus, an opportunity may be missed.”
— James E. Faust
What’s important is not whether you lose or fail—it’s what you do after you fail that matters. Will you make an excuse to avoid trying it again? Will you take the easy and safe path, treading lightly without any risk of stumbling? Or will you embrace your greatest moment of defeat and turn it into a victory? Are you willing to rise up to meet the next challenge?
There is a choice to make. Embrace your failures and look for the chance to turn a loss into a win. We are educated to think that losing is all about failing and failing is bad. But it’s not. When we stumble and nothing works out the way it should have, it isn’t the end of the world. You can bounce back, get up again and give it another shot. Most things you are afraid to fail at are really golden opportunities in disguise. You can choose to ignore these opportunities or take a chance and act on them.
If you listen to your fear and react to it by not taking action, you will be paralyzed indefinitely, unable to think or act. Your fears will win and you will be defeated at every turn. You must be willing to rise up again after experiencing those continuous knockdowns, and to refuse to give in when the odds are stacked against you.
A mentor of mine had a saying: “Always be the last man standing.” In a race, after everyone else has given up, you are the one still trying to reach the finish line. When the market turns bad and you just suffered a financial hit, you’ll be looking for ways to make more money. When people say that what you are chasing is impossible, become a believer in the impossible. This is the attitude that champions adopt.
You can create a motivating positive force by pushing forward, working with your fear and using it as leverage. It’s like molding clay. Unti
l you pick it up and start working with it, it remains in its original state. You have the power of choice to create whatever you desire, regardless of present conditions.
Take Charge and Make a Choice
You can start today by taking charge and accepting full responsibility for your life. Live the empowered lifestyle you know you want.
As you learn to talk back to negative messages, you will experience change. Stop convincing yourself why you can’t and tell yourself why you can, and the reasons why you feel you deserve this—because you do!
Our excuses are convincing, but they won’t stand a chance against the counterattack of a positive statement. For a long time, I used to say to myself, “Why me? Why would anyone want to hire me? Why should someone want to pay me for my work when there’s always someone out there who can do it better? Who is going to believe in me when I can’t even believe in myself? What do I have to offer?”
I realized these questions were negative and could only lead deeper into thinking like a failure. I took a different approach and started asking, “Hey, why not me?” When you find yourself making a negative excuse, identify the source and replace it with the opposite.
Take a look at the following examples.
I will get to it someday.
Get started on your dream today. If you wait for someday, you will never do it. All your excuses are running out with each new day. It is today that presents the greatest opportunity. Will you seize it, or will you wait for a someday that may never arrive?
I lack the discipline to succeed.
Nobody lacks discipline. We lack worthy goals that motivate and inspire us to take immediate action. If you think you have no discipline, it is because you have goals that don’t motivate you or get you excited enough to do anything about it.
Write down your goals as soon as possible and get to work on them. Discipline is not something you are born with. It is a practice you work at to become proficient. Start disciplining your words and thoughts to work for you instead of against you.