Ready for a boost in your self esteem? This contradicts traditional wisdom, but you have never failed.
You’ve probably had times when you didn’t achieve the goals you set. You may have self-sabotaged and undercut your own conscious intentions. But you have not failed, ever.
The reason I say this is simple, really. There is always some part of you that’s in charge of doing whatever it is that you do. You’re not out of control. That’s not even possible. When it feels like you’ve lost control, it’s just that you’ve handed over control to another set of your psychological processes (or sub-routines) and are letting them handle your life for a bit.
Am I saying you have multiple personalities? No, absolutely not.
But if you were a computer, your main operating system (your main personality) would have what we call sub-routines. These are specialized little programs that are set up to do only one or two tasks extremely well while the rest of the operating system keeps on overseeing the big job.
Well, the fact is, even though we’re not computers, we do have these sub-routines. You’ve got one that can drive you to work while you concentrate on your latest argument with your spouse, or laugh at the DJ on the radio or plan tonight’s backyard barbecue. You arrive at work and can remember almost none of the drive. Does that mean you have a multiple personality? Same answer — no, absolutely not.
Anytime we step into new territory we have sub-routines that crank up our alertness and remind us to pay attention to everything. We often think of this as a stress reaction, fear and uncertainty. That’s only natural, you say?
Well, there are some people, with a different basis for their self image and self esteem, who don’t react the same way to new experiences. They welcome them, they feel excitement, and they consider them to be positive experiences, not negative ones.
So the way we react to new experiences is very much optional. However, you may have learned a sub-routine during childhood that said, “New experiences mean you’re going to make mistakes, and mistakes are ‘wrong’ or shameful.” As a result, your mind brings up fears and negative emotions for you anytime you step into new territory.
Then you draw back, or don’t give your best effort, and you end up disappointing yourself. You know you could have done better, but you didn’t, and so that means you “failed.”
Wrong. You did what you did. But your self esteem takes the punch anyway.
When we face so-called “stressful” situations, we may have a practice of handing over control to some other sub-routine. We do that because we know the sub-routine can handle it. We don’t want to go through all that learning right now, so we hand it off, abdicating responsibility. And we even know, at some level, which sub-routine we’re giving the task to, so we’re basically choosing the exact outcome we’ll accept.
If we choose the “bungler” sub-routine, we’re choosing a bungled outcome. The “run-and-hide” sub-routine means we have opted for run-and-hide type results. In every case, the sub-routine we choose is dictated by our self image and level of self esteem.
But then, after the crisis is over, we come back out and start claiming, “I failed… I wanted to do better, but I failed.”
No, you didn’t fail — you abdicated. And the part you abdicated to actually succeeded brilliantly. That’s why I say failure isn’t even possible.
However, anytime you want to start getting different results, all you need to do is learn how to stop abdicating your authority, and maybe train a new sub-routine. We’ll talk more about that in a later article. Once you consciously take over the training and selecting of sub-routines, your self esteem begins to have room to grow and flourish.
by Charles Burke
Charles BurkeLevel: PlatinumCharles Burke, retired and living in Thailand, is the author of “inside the Minds of Winners” and “Command More Luck. His blog is located at …
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