Addiction to Failure
Why do we always seem to fail time after time?
In The Human Condition, we are always trying to be better than others. This is our measure of success. We want more knowledge, more wisdom, more money, more sex, and a larger house than everyone else. We equate this with success. You want success and you are Addicted to Failure. Why are we Addicted to Failure when The Human Condition states we want to be better than everyone else?
In The Human Condition, we have learned that there are three ways of being better than others or more successful. We can withhold information, objects, success, or connections. We can diminish their value to other people. We can become more successful by working hard, earning more, learning more, innovating more, collecting more rocks, and collecting more shit than other people have. We can also become more successful by providing for others, taking care of others, teaching other people, and helping old ladies across the street (even if they don't really want to cross the street). Being Addicted to Failure you still use The Human Condition to get your fix. Why do you like using the Human Condition this way?
Our Addiction to Failure is evident when we put others down to make ourselves feel better. When a person has the capability to help us out with our business we ignore their phone calls, keep them from networking with important customers, and avoid promoting our employees, and consequently, this will keep our businesses from succeeding.
Our Addiction to Failure is evident when we are only concerned with our success. This tends to lean more to The Human State. We forget that we need to take time for those around us. The most valuable thing that you could give anyone in your life is your time because when you give your time you will never get it back. If you are only concerned with your success you will fail if your dreams need the help of others. No matter how important you may say that your dreams are to you, if you are only concerned with your success, you will fail. If you are only concerned with your own success, why would you want to help others?
Our Addiction to Failure cannot be present in The God State. Try passing out money to homeless people, and let me know how you failed at that. Try to be loving, compassionate, and supportive of your children, and let me know how you failed at that. Try to be attentive and caring toward your significant other, and let me know how you failed at that. Try to support and empower your employees or coworkers, and let me know how you failed at that. Even if some of these individuals have severe mental issues and cannot accept your compassion and support. Onlookers will be inspired and the disease (virus) will spread.
The larger percent of our time that we spend in The God State compared to The Devil State or The Human State will increase our chance of being successful. The more time we spend being successful the more this feeling becomes part of our comfort zone. The only way that you can get rid of an addiction is to replace it with a new addiction. Addiction to Success. This is why successful people will then start a new business, write a new book, and it will be successful. Because of their addiction, they will accept nothing less.
But how about you? Do you feel you are failing time after time? You put in a lot of effort and just when it seems that everything is going great, everything falls apart? You plan, schedule, study, practice; and still, fail, time after time. You are not alone, many have the exact same problem. You have just written a fantastic novel. You wrote it on your laptop. You think to yourself, "Finished at last!" You close the laptop, and you take advantage of well-earned sleep. You wake up in the morning, ready to send this off to the publisher, and the files are nowhere to be found on your computer. If you find these files, they are corrupted, and unreadable. You find a new job, your dream job, that you have been applying for and trying to get for years. They tell you to show up on Monday. On Friday you don't feel well, you go to your doctor, and he tells you that you have advanced-stage cancer. The week before, during the physical, everything was fine.
You have been wanting to purchase a brand-new luxury car. The car of your dreams. You go down to the dealership and fill out a credit application hoping that they will accept your credit. You get a phone call two days later saying come on down, sign the papers, and you have been approved. Just before your pen hits the paper and you are going to sign for it, you look at the salesperson and say "I can't believe that they missed my bankruptcy two months ago and the car loan that I defaulted on three years ago … This is AMAZING!" As you walk dejectedly out of the dealership because they pulled your loan, you shake your head, and say "Why do only bad things happen to me?"
Let's take a look at success. When you succeed it requires more effort to maintain the level of success that you get. Others expect more of you, and you will need to take care of others. When you fail, less is expected of you. With success, you fear that others will not come to your aid or rush in to help. Others will expect you to improve to the next level. You will also pressure yourself to improve to the next level… Requiring even more effort. Constantly you are afraid that you will reach your level of incompetency. You rationalize in your head the best thing to do is don't start or find an excuse that others will accept.
Inside your head, your brain functions like a bus with 36 people on it. Everyone on the left side of the bus is female. Everyone on the right side is male. Each row of seats has a specific function. The people in the back of the bus are part of The Lizard Brain. The people in the back row are always having sex or thinking about it, or talking about it. The next row up is always hungry and looking for the next meal. The next row, are always constantly afraid: should we have sex, do we need to be afraid of having sex, do we have enough to eat or are we eating too much? Each row thereafter has a specific function: listening, looking, thinking, feeling, fortune telling, fantasy creating, reality checking, and so forth.
Are you letting the lizard brain control your Bus?
The people in the back of the bus are constantly arguing over what to do next. In a female, the ones on the left side of the bus have a larger say in the outcome. In males, the people on the right side of the bus have a larger influence over the outcome. There is a barrier between the people at the back of the bus and the bus driver. The bus driver cannot hear the arguing and fighting going on in the back. The barrier stops this completely. There is a slot in the barrier that a piece of paper can pass through. When the people on the back of the bus have come to a consensus, they pass their decision on to the bus driver. The bus driver then speeds up, slows down, turns left, turns right, stops, or whatever the directions tell him to do. The bus driver is oblivious to the activity in the back of the bus. He feels he is making all of these decisions on his own. This is occurring in every human being that is alive and conscious.
In some people or some buses, the barrier is very thin and does not block the arguing and bickering going on in the back of the bus. The bus driver either thinks aliens are talking to him or he is possessed by demons. This is only because they do not understand the process. This presents itself as a disease that is called Schizophrenia.
When the people in the back of the bus become addicted to failure, they will scheme and plot, and direct the bus driver to run over nails, go off a cliff, or drive in the wrong direction ensuring that the same familiar feeling returns. We are not aware of this process going on. This is why failure keeps showing up in our life, and we are confused because this is not where we wanted to go… But this is where the people in the back of the bus wanted to go.
Another thing that creates fear in being successful is that we realize that successful people are expected to take care of others. Willie Nelson was making eight million dollars a year and said that the only difference was that he now had 150 families to care for. He had 150 people setting up, tearing down, and moving stuff around for him; and he was responsible for these people's income for them and their families. When you win the lottery, everyone that you have ever known or spoken to, and everyone you are related to, ten times removed, will be calling you asking for money. This makes us afraid of success because with success comes more responsibility, and we also feel the need to maintain this success. You can win a marathon, but can you win every marathon that you run for the rest of your life?
Success is a letdown. Is that all there is? Brief elation, and then nothing. You need to start struggling again. Is your addiction to failure keeping you from moving forward? Look at the champions after they get off of the podium: the next day, week, decade... Most of them are caught in the mayhem of groupies, and friends asking for money. They realize that the more successful they become, the more is expected from them, and the more that people expect people to be taken care of by them. This puts horrendous pressure on us as we know deep inside that we can never be the savior that they want us to be. Caesar in Latin means savior. Caesar in Rome was the Savior of all of his subjects. This is why Jesus was killed because the Jews were calling him “their Savior” which was sedition (disloyal) to Caesar.
When you are working for a corporation, you cannot outshine your superiors. They will consider you a traitor. So you swallow your pride, and never work up to your full potential. This actually lessens the value of the company and what can be accomplished by them. To keep your position in life secure, you embrace failure. Why are you are always afraid of outshining those with more powerful positions than you? In a wolf pack, there is an Alpha Male and an Alpha Female. The inferior males never mature sexually until the alpha male dies. We have inherited the same genes in our DNA that try to force us to be subservient to the leader.
We sabotage our chance of success so that we are protected from attack by the alpha male (or our wives). By sabotaging ourselves and becoming a failure, which we have been most of our life, we can feel comfortable with who we are. We spend twelve years going to school, being told by every teacher, and grade that we are failures. Anything less than valedictorian, or an A+ in all of your classes means that you are a failure. Out of a class of a thousand, there is one valedictorian, and three salutatorians and the rest are failures. So out of a thousand people, there are 996 failures. Is it any wonder that people become addicted to failure? If you hear something often enough from your parents, teachers, or spouses about what a failure you are, eventually you will start to believe it… even though it is not true. Why would you want to do something different?
When you are trying something new, there is the power of imagination. You get a rush building up all the fantastic scenarios that will come with success. The rush of anticipation for failure produces neurotransmitters called endorphins and cortisol. Although they make you feel good, they are produced to get your body ready for fight or flight. This makes you feel alive. When you are faced with failure you become alive… every nerve in your body is alive and ready for action. Ready to run, ready to fight.
For the majority of us, the people in the back of the bus have heard for our whole life about what a failure we are. From our parents, our teachers, and our preachers. So a decision is made that your Ego is a failure. There Job is to ensure that this tradition is carried on. All decisions will then direct the bus driver to a guaranteed failure.
When we talk with our friends about our new projects: writing books, developing clean free energy, losing weight, a new invention that is worth 100 million dollars. Our brain hears this and figures that we have already done it. The brain decides to put more effort into it because it is already done. They have found out that the more that you talk about what you are doing, the less action that you put into it. Your new project will never get done. The less you talk about it, the more action you put into it, and the greater chance it has to be accomplished.
There is confusion in The Human Condition. Of the three ways that we have to be better than anyone else (putting others down, building ourselves up, or helping others). In the devil state, we find that putting others down does help us feel better, but we fail to see that putting ourselves down will only make us feel worse. When we are Addicted to Failure In the human state we see that falling from failure isn't worth the climb. In the God State in addiction to failure, others might hurt us if we try to help. If we continue with our Addiction to Failure we will never accomplish our dreams. Do you really want to accomplish your dreams?
If you are Addicted to Failure stopping cold turkey will only lead you to your complete collapse. Start with a 28-day program, which means that you must get away from current situations from friends, acquaintances, or situations that are dragging you down. Join a Mastermind Group of like-minded people that are not addicted to failure, these people will sit in a circle and discuss how they can help each other to become successful. Sitting in a circle and looking in the eyes of each other in a safe place produces Oxytocin. This is what they do in a rehab center. You need to attend these Mastermind Groups for the rest of your life. Just as any addict would do to avoid relapse.
Improving is something that you need to do for the rest of your life unless you are addicted to failure. White knuckling for a month or two will not work. This needs to be a gradual process that will continue for the rest of your life. Do not give up. There will always be room for improvement.
These things subconsciously make you shy away, or avoid success. Living in a safe community with positive reinforcement will help your brain produce Oxytocin. When you do lots of this any addiction of any sort will not be able to exist. They did an experiment where they gave rats a choice between cocaine and food. The rats chose cocaine. Then they put another rat in a clear box that had a small hole in it to receive food. The rats that could choose realized that the rat in the clear box could not eat without their help. They still have food or cocaine available to them. They choose to feed the rat in the cage and did not touch the cocaine.
The more time you spend in the God State helping others the fewer addictions will affect you. You will also need to allow others to be in a God State and let them help you. Just because we need help does not make you a failure.