Week Two.

By: Kevin Seaman

If You Don't Know Where You're Going, Any Road Will Take You There!

I remember once driving on the Interstate. I had become distracted by something my traveling companion was saying and there was a moment in time where I was disengaged. Suddenly, I had a feeling of disorientation and the next thing I realized I was in the wrong lane and I missed my exit onto another major highway. Being an optimist, I felt I would just turn off on the next exit and turn around.

No exit was to be found for miles and I was headed in the wrong direction, a direction I was not even sure of, 20 miles out of my way. Has that ever happened to you?

In a car, most definitely (especially if you've ever driven in the Washington, D.C. metro area); but what about life? Have there been times when you felt uncertain about your direction, about where you were heading? Have there been times when you had an uneasy feeling about how you were spending your time, and maybe about what you were running after?

A lot of people tend to go from job to job, city to city, or relationship to relationship seeking something. Many times they get very, very good at knowing what they don't want, but have difficulty pinpointing exactly what they do want.

We'll let you in on a secret. Nobody wants money, material possessions, or even close relationships. Now before you declare me crazy, think about it.

Have you ever achieved something and thought, "Is this it? Is this all there is?" We all have things that we want - the relationships, the money, the cars, boats, clothes, homes, and so forth - but the reality is that we want the emotions that we believe those things will give us.

We want the closeness, the love, the trust, the humor, the intimacy and the sharing that a relationship can bring. We want the security, the freedom, the power, and the sense of accomplishment that money can bring.

We also want the excitement, the prestige, the status, and the fun we believe certain material goods will afford us. We want the feeling of glory, achievement and esteem that winning a championship will bring.

Our values provide a powerful motivating force for our behavior. After all, we all desire to have pleasure in our lives. Yet, it is also useful, indeed vital, to understand what others link pain to. Just as we all link varying degrees of pleasure to values, we link varying degrees of pain to emotional states such as boredom, rejection, loneliness, failure, jealousy, and so on.

These emotional states are ones we try to avoid, so we call them 'Avoided States'. So we link pleasure to values, and pain to avoided states.

Conflicts between valued states and avoided states are very common, and in fact are natural. There is an inherent dynamic tension between these two.

If you value peace, then you try to avoid conflict; if you value love, then you most likely avoid hate; if you value success, you try to avoid failure. However, if you are going to have success, you will experience failure? Many people do fail, but they don't allow their failures, their feelings of failure, or their fears of failure to stop them. That is the difference.

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Let's stay with this example of success and failure, because you will certainly deal with this both with yourself and others. Any person who wants to be successful in anything, you name it, and he or she will fail far more times than they will succeed. Riding a bike, we all fell down far more times than we succeeded in staying up at first.

Learning to walk, did you ever see a baby walk on her first try? Conversely, did you ever see a baby get so frustrated and angry because she didn't walk perfectly that she quit? That she gave up and never tried again because she hadn't gotten it yet?

Of course not. But have you ever seen non-babies do that? Not you personally, but maybe people you know? Many people value success, but they also want to avoid feelings of failure (or feeling like a failure).

The problem comes when a person's fear or avoidance of failing prevents him from taking action and trying, or going through the necessary repetition of trial and error that it takes to master something.

Remember, we all move toward pleasure and away from pain. Some of us are driven more by moving toward pleasure, some more by away from pain.

How Can I Use This?

Here's how! Think of a goal or objective you wish to achieve, but have had difficulty completing. Make a clear picture of this goal in your head. Now, think of how great you would feel when this goal were completed. Think of all the benefits you would gain and the feeling of total satisfaction knowing that you have accomplished this.

What Are Your Goals? >Lose Fat >Build Muscle >Improve Energy >Other

Visualize yourself with a huge smile on your face, as you finish. Got that picture clear and complete in your mind's eye. Good! Now, think of the avoided states associated with not completing this same task. Think of the frustration you've experienced now and before as this goal once again slips away from your grasp.

Think of how you will feel in the future as you embrace the loss of satisfaction and negative drain these emotions have, as you face the reality that you failed only because you have given up! Run these two mental videos over and over in your head. These visions are the carrot and the stick.

Now, write "The Carrot and the Stick" on a small note pad and put the note somewhere conspicuous, somewhere you will see it daily for at least one week. When you see it run your mental video.

In a short time you will begin to change your association to this goal and connect your emotional content via your values and the principle of pain and pleasure. I've had amazing results with this, and if you believe and try it, so will you.

Have an exceptional week!
Kevin Seaman

Originally published: http://thewinningmindset.com/wms20.html

• The game Monopoly was originally rejected for containing 52 fundamental errors. Today the game is so successful that Parker Brothers prints more than $60 billion of Monopoly money each year.

• Michael Jordan was cut from his High School Basketball Team for his lack of talent.

• Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times (but he also hit 714 home runs)

• Steven Spielberg dropped out of high school in his sophomore year. He was persuaded to come back and placed in a learning disabled class. He lasted a month.

• Beethoven's music teacher once told him that as a composer, he was hopeless.

• Winston Churchill failed the 6th grade.

• John Creasy, the English novelist who wrote 564 books, was rejected 753 times before he became established.

• Charles Darwin's father told him he would amount to nothing and would be a disgrace to himself and his family.

• Walt Disney was fired by the editor of a newspaper because he, Disney, had "no good ideas".

• When Thomas Edison was a boy his teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything.

KSeaman579@aol.com

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