The One and Only Cause of Failure in Any Area of Your Life... and the One and Only Solution
By David Cameron
Author of A Happy Pocket Full of Money
All we do is create experiences. That is all we do, as human beings. There is nothing else we do here on earth.
Think about your whole day today - wasn't it a collection of one experience after another? As creators of experiences, we make good ones happen and almost every day, surprisingly, we put a monkey wrench in our own lives and mess things up.
Every day, and for no reason at all, unconsciously, we destroy our own efforts and then fail or suffer unnecessarily. When it comes to success, we are our own worst enemy and we don't even know it. We take one step forward and two steps back, or more. Today we can all stop this unnecessary step backwards.
Do you know how much more your life, business, relationships and health would improve if you changed one little thing? Let us see how.
The one and only cause of all failure in any area of your life...
In this article, we are going to focus on work, the experience we most often find ourselves in. But you can apply the principles to anything else, including health and relationships. Work in itself is an experience, and we work so that our 'future' experiences can be better - or so we hope.
Instinctively, we know that we create our own experiences, otherwise we would not bother put any effort into work. And we desire 'good' experiences, that is why we work so hard, believing that the reward will be a 'better' life.
You have no doubt in your mind that you create your experiences - the only doubt you may have is the extent to which you are in control of the creation of your own experiences. Furthermore, most of humanity recognizes that they make the 'good' times, but they are in denial of the fact that they make the 'bad' times as well, the 'failures'. They mostly blame other people and conditions for the bad ones. Well, here is the biggest reason why we have bad experiences and failures in our work, business and marketing:
Worry and fear.
That is it. That is what causes all the failures in our work, marketing, business, relationships, health and everything else. And do you know why? Because we become what we think about most.
Our thoughts create our next experience, our next moment. We have a mountain of scientific, spiritual and psychological evidence of this fact, yet we hear it and forget it.
Quantum physicists have proven beyond a doubt that the material world is fully dependent on its observers. They have proven that all matter is made of energy, and this energy 'arranges' itself into the matter we see based on the expectations of the observer.
In other words, it is our intentions, attention and observations that 'collapse' this energy into matter. This is not scientific speculation any more. Nobel Prize winning scientists have proven this without a shred of doubt. And what do our religions tell us? All our religions, all of them, tell us that what we believe we become.
The Bible, for example, tells us that whatever we ask, we receive, whatever we seek, we find, whatever we believe, we are, and as a man thinketh in his heart so is he. Whenever you are thinking, you are asking. Your asking does not start when you start praying and end when you say 'amen'.
All your thoughts are constant communication with the universe, communication that is acted upon exactly. Every thought of fear and worry that you have produces an outcome in your world. It is this outcome that you call 'failure that was beyond your control'. It was never beyond your control - you just were not conscious of what you were doing and the power that you had. You have now heard evidence from science and religion that this is so. Let us now see what psychologists and philosophers say:
"The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when an individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves." - Carl Jung
"Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen." - Kahlil Gibran
"The attempt to escape a problem is the problem. See the logic of this. When a man tries to escape, when he moves away from the problem, he divides himself into one man with a problem and another man who will escape the problem. In reality, there is no such division, so the escape must always fail, as the man sadly experiences. But when seeing that he is the problem itself, that he and his problem are one, he stops trying to escape because he sees there is no other course. In this state of intelligent acknowledgement of reality, he will not have the problem." - Vernon Howard
"The aphorism, "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he," not only embraces the whole of a man's being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life." - James Allen
"Whether you believe you can or you can't - either way you are right" - Henry Ford
How most people create their lives... and how they get it wrong
Let us now look at how most people go about creating their lives and their business: They have a goal, a desire. In terms of work, this goal may be to advance in their career, to launch a new marketing strategy, to have their web site achieve success and high traffic, or whatever else.
They decide to go for this goal. They then have countless thoughts about this goal or desire. A great percentage of those thoughts are worries and doubts as to whether they will achieve this goal. A great percentage of these thoughts are analysis of how they will achieve it and how they may fail. They then analyze the analysis and analyze that analysis until what is left is a mass of confusion and fear and doubt. They reach a point where they don't even know how they wish the goal to turn out - one confident side of them says outcome A will happen, then a fear comes up and it says B, then a newspaper article makes them think C, and so on.
How does anyone expect anything but havoc in the outcome of such haphazard thought full of fear and doubt? You must be like a child. A child, a small child before they are influences by adults into fear and doubt, is of one mind, certain of outcome, ever happy. You can guess how much more successful you would be with such clear thought.
Worry and fear is the single most destructive force in this world and in our personal lives and businesses. Yet we do it every day!
Why? Because we believe it works. It is that simple.
I was watching an Oprah episode with Dr. Phillip C. McGraw, author of Self Matters, as the guest that day. He said, as most others have said before, that humans do not do anything unless we believe there is a pay off.
The only reason we worry is that we believe it works! That is the payoff. As insane as this idea is, we somehow buy into it. Why? Mainly because we do not know the future. So we have a goal, then because we cannot see the future, we have this thought that it may not come true, so we worry, thinking it will help us. But because we become what we think about, the very worry itself comes true.
That which we fear and worry about materializes. We are worries about things because we are worried about things. It is a vicious cycle. We believe what we see yet what we see is created by what we believe. But that cycle starts in our belief. We change our belief and reality changes.
So what is the solution?
Stop worrying and drop your fears. Time for more evidence. Again, every religion and spiritual path, not to mention psychologists and psychiatrists, tell us not to worry. For example, the Bible tells us "Be anxious over nothing", "Be still", and so on. But most importantly, we are guided over and over again into detachment of outcome.
Zen, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and all other faiths, over and over, in various ways, teach detachment, non-resistance. Letting go. The very idea of struggle is made necessary because of our resistance.
Look at nature. Things work out without resistance in the most miraculous of ways. Change must happen in this physical realm. Nothing stays the same. Yet everything blooms.
Deepak Chopra, in his best-selling book the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, outlines detachment as one of those laws. In any case, what you resist persists. So if you find yourself resisting an outcome you do not wish to occur, you are simply energizing it into occurring.
So why is so much emphasis given by sages, masters, teachers and guides to be detached, to let go? Because you do not know every possible outcome, combination and miracle needed to get to the best outcome possible at the best time. And because you do not know, when you feel the need to control what you don't know, you worry and cause suffering to yourself. You forget that you are not alone.
The universe is not just made of physical stuff. There is a Source of the physical, that which all thought and matter springs from and goes back into. Spirit is the source that everything, from yourself to your car to the stars, comes from. It is First Cause, and eternal. It knows what you do not.
And if you have ever observed your life, you will notice that often things have come to you in ways you would never have planned to give an outcome much better than you would have hoped for. How did that happen?
See, when you decide to do everything yourself, including what you know not, you limit yourself to your fears and finite possibilities. Stick to what you know and leave the rest to That Which Knows.
If you have a desire to succeed in a certain thing, express that intension, will it, know that it shall be acted upon without fail by the universe, just like all of nature is, and let go, with faith and certainty. Detach yourself totally fro the 'problem', outcome or steps needed for the outcome to happen.
A goal set with certainty is already accomplished, and because it is, all the miracles necessary for its manifestation are already set and will happen in good time as long as you do not get in the way. If you start analyzing and worrying, setting deadlines and conditions, steps and metrics that only serve to scare you in case you miss them, you are getting in your own way.
Simply intend, believe, be grateful because you know it is being taken care of, and leave it, move on to the next thing. This not only saves you from failure, but it frees you so much time to intend so many more things instead of spending hours worrying over that one thing. Here is a quote that should get you thinking:
"The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations that our life might be much easier and simpler than we make it; that the world might be a happier place than it is; that there is no need of struggles, convulsions, and despairs, of the wringing of the hands and the gnashing of the teeth; that we mis-create our own evils. We interfere with the optimism of nature; for whenever we get this vantage-ground of the past, or of a wiser mind in the present, we are able to discern that we are begirt with laws which execute themselves. The face of external nature teaches the same lesson. Nature will not have us fret and fume." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Detachment has been proven to work over and over. Worry and fear has been proven to destroy over and over. I saw the following fantastic bit of information in Joe Vitale's new book, Spiritual Marketing: "According to research done at Spindrift Foundation on the power of prayer, a "Thy will be done" prayer gets more than twice as many results as a specific "give me this" prayer."
You do not have to be a religious person. You don't even need to have a religion. The laws of the universe work uniformly for all, no matter whom or what they are. And intention with detachment will work for you regardless.
So there you have it. Focus only on that which you can do. And the only thing you can effectively do is intend and enjoy Now.
J. Krishnamurti once said that we should live "as though one were living for that single day, for that single hour." Did you know that all problems exist in the mind in the past and future? Look at your thoughts of problems. They are all memories or worries about something in future that has not even happened yet and can very well be avoided if only you stopped worrying.
Stop your mental noise, focus on Now, and you will start having inspiration instead of worries. Learn how to apply these new ways in your life. In any field, be it marketing, business, child care, relationships, health, finances, or whatever, you can live in this new more effective way.
Let go. Focus only on what you know and can, and leave the rest to the Source, Providence, Spirit, the Universe, or whatever other term you find comfortable. If you don't, you only get in your own way. Let go and enjoy!
Written by David Cameron, author of Raising Humans and A Happy Pocket Full of Money. His latest book is How to Live With Yourself and Automatically and Simply Love Yourself To Pure Freedom, Health, Wealth and Relationship Success

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