Courage is required here too. It is not very pleasant to look your mistakes right in their bloodshot eyes, is it? This amounts to admitting you were gullible, you were foolish, and your ego got in the way again. But consider the alternative. If you don't admit them and then use them as the foundation for new habits, they do not only remain, but also grow in strength and number. People who never admit when they are wrong do not actually avoid mistakes. In fact, their insistence that they never commit errors is itself the biggest mistake of all! They fool no one but themselves and this paves the way for newer, larger and usually more serious mistakes in the future. History books are full of such figures, although you can probably provide equally dramatic examples from your own experience.

If you can really drain the meaning from your mistakes, you have transformed them on the spot. From the feeling of "My God, that hurt!" you can move to a more affirmative stance. Not forgetting your pain for a moment, you can use it to motivate yourself in a better, more fruitful direction next time. Now that your pain has gotten your attention, listen up. Your pain can pave the way to pleasure. Your dramatic non-success can help propel you to real and long-lasting success around the next corner. You have got to get beyond your petty, bloated ego long enough to allow this to happen. Otherwise, you will engage in massive denial, and refuse to acknowledge you ever made a mistake. In the process, you will miss one of the most valuable learning devices ever designed by an attentive and supportive Nature.

Try to see the good in everything. Starting with your pain, move outward in larger and more inclusive circles. Even physical pain is there for a reason; it is a signal that something needs attention. Acknowledge it, and then transcend it. Look through the pain to what it may be trying to tell you about yourself. Many people who have suffered heart attacks at an early age find their lives transformed by this all-too-sobering experience. They learn to change their diet, to exercise properly, to re-examine their proprieties in life. They improve the quality as well as the quantity of years. If one keeps ignoring gentler warnings (chest pains, bad dreams, restlessness, depression,) Nature has a way of being more insistent.
What's the moral? Learn now, or pay more later. The third option, Don't Learn or Pay, is not available yet on this planet. Don't grumble; just use it for your personal growth and enlightenment. The wise person does this, the fool and/or coward tries to escape it. Their lives are not really pain-free at all. In fact, they probably exhibit more pain per cubic inch than anyone in denial and they run away from the nagging truth. A little courage goes a long way, especially when it comes to self-examination.

The successful person does not avoid disappointments. The only way to do this is to lower your expectations to a zero point, which is another kind of failure. Instead, this person learns from disappointments. They gain insight from what is not worked and does not seem to be working. This gives them both strength and flexibility. Their fear is reduced because negative results are not considered final. They do not cower in a corner, afraid to look at their experiences. They stride out to meet the world, looking at whatever happens as raw material for future triumphs and successes.
Successful people change raw material into refined products. Experience is not the end of the process, it is the beginning. Disappointment is used to go in a new direction. Naturally, with this outlook, they do not see themselves as victims. Instead, they see their role as active, even protective. They don't let external events push them around; they get ahead of the whole process. They don't just respond in a blind and unreflective way to the events life may bring their way. They become the master of their destinies. Again, this requires courage. The payoff is more than worth the price and their lives to prove it.

Successful people almost always find ways of motivating themselves. An excellent way of doing this is to find inspirational reading or listening materials. To discover what is best for you, you must explore all avenues. You may find special insight and motivation from an unlikely place, or from obvious sources. Also, if you look to previous sources, which did not work, look elsewhere.

Tell yourself you can succeed and find little ways of proving it. Develop several goals. We need both long-term and short-term goals. The first gives us a sense of direction and ultimate purpose, a North Star. The second gives us a sense of movement and progress. After all, it does not do much good to know how fast you are moving unless you can also determine your proper direction. Long-term goals give us direction; short-term goals measure our speed.

Your long-term goal is success and happiness. Does that help? Not in itself. You must be more specific. What do you have in mind as central to this goal? Is it financial freedom? Good Health? More friends? Recognition? Be as specific as you can. View this as your personal success graph. Plot your progress or lack of progress. Do you have more friends this week than last? Have you met your objectives in terms of that new exercise program?
These short-term objectives will only make sense in terms of your long-term goals. If financial success is not high on your list, making more sales won't get you where you want to be. If it is high on your list, then more sales is a sign that progress is good and it must be used to stimulate you further in this direction.

Make this list as individual as possible. It has to reflect your personality, motives and history. It may not resemble what you have written down earlier. But you admitted that your life has not gotten you the kind of success and happiness you wanted. This is hardly a surprise. Maybe it is the ideal time for a new direction in your life. Maybe the job is not the place to look for happiness after all. Perhaps it has already served its purpose. It is time to look elsewhere.

There are questions you need to ask yourself regarding issues that remained unresolved. This takes courage. And then think again on other issues. What better time to start than now? Putting them off certainly did not get you where you wanted to go. So trying to come to grips with them could not do less.

What have you got to lose? That old rut just about "did-ya'-in." Are you going to help it complete the job by perpetuating it even for one more? It is your life; no one can make you enjoy it.

Wouldn't you really like to meet that familiar-looking stranger who gazes at you from the mirror every morning? Chances are they are not half bad if you developed more of an acquaintance with them. Courage again is required to meet yourself. You may find a secret agony, a deep-felt disappointment and well-hidden source of pain and conflict. This may not be a pretty sight, but one that will allow healing and growth to occur, perhaps for the first time.
The next time you look into a mirror ask yourself, "Who am I really? Oh, I know what roles I've played, but behind all that, what makes me tick?" See what answers you get. Even silence means something. In fact, complete silence might be the most profound answer of all. As disturbing as this response might be, it can be the foundation for a new personal awareness.

The ancient Greeks never said knowing you would be easy, and they emphasized self-knowledge more that any other society. They only argued that it was necessary, and nothing in two thousand years has proven them wrong.

Self-knowledge is not an empty slogan. It requires discipline, constant effort and, you guessed it, courage. Those who lack this rare and precious commodity seldom do so for lack of intelligence; rather, they fail to exhibit nerve. You need bone-jarring courage to look into your soul because you never know what might be in there.

Each of us must be motivated to be a Columbus to discover the New World of our soul. Because our path to success is blocked by our lack of self-knowledge, we can look forward to new discoveries about this world and ourselves. We will make friends of strangers; find more energy, creativity and joy than was ever possible before. By admitting that you do not know, you begin to substitute true knowledge for guesswork and rumor. You will come to know yourself as you really are, not as someone described to.

From this knowledge will flow power, confidence and conviction, with a new level of courage you would not have experienced had you not summoned the nerve to come this far. The result? You now have a view of success that is half complete. How can you view yourself as anything but a success if you finally find out who you are? This does not mean you are finally a success, rather you now understand what you want, need, and feel.
Unfortunately, for the average person such knowledge lies beneath layers of role-playing, deception, fraud and pretense. That is the bad news. The good news is this can be swept away by courageous and wise people.

The biggest barrier is not the lack of intelligence, but the failure of nerve. Once fear is transcended, the process of inner searching can begin in earnest, even if this is done one minute at a time. One discovery triggers another. The joy uncovering one simple truth can make way for others.

Do not think of this inner self as something that is already there. It is not a diamond, hard, complete, and ready to be unearthed. We change ourselves in any activity. The person you are after this quest is not the same person who was afraid to begin with. Your courage is now redefining you at every curve and dip in your journey. You are as much a creator of a new you as you are a discoverer of an already-finished entity.

While this insight might be unnerving for some, it should be an encouragement for those brave enough to see what is really involved. If you have the courage to continue this adventure, you define yourself in each moment as a brave explorer. The reverse is also true, if you lose heart and give up the whole thing. This is nothing but the flip side of the same existential coin. We have encountered it before, and certainly will again, before our adventure together is over. You did not have to have these qualities before, either, at least not in their finished form. You had to have only enough bravery to begin the quest, not enough to guarantee success. Like the slogan, "One day at a time," so popular in some therapeutic circles, this can be ours too, except we will modify it to read, 'One moment at a time."
If you can look at yourself now, you are preparing yourself to continue the process. Time may seem to be against you, but show perseverance. You can complete the process. You will not know in advance what the outcome will be, but do not be frightened by that. Ignore the living statues as you walk past them. They are the ones too afraid to succeed. Their fate will not be yours. Keep your eyes on your expedition and you will leave them far behind. Stay in touch with your deepest feelings, reactions and values. These are personal qualities which help make you who and what you are. Keep track of your present motives, while you remember what has worked for and against you in the past.

Be sure you do not lose sight of your options, even if they were not exercised at the time. For many, this is an uplifting discovery. They saw their lives as grimly fatalistic, now they can begin to perceive choices, crossroads, and might-have-beens, "roads-not-taken." This is very exciting, indeed. If you were freer before more than you realized until now, then you are freer now than you ever realized previously. The future is fluid. It can be changed by your informed decisions and actions.

While this awareness generates some anxiety, it also helps to reveal the dignity of human freedom. It points to courage, which is required of those prepared to step beyond ready excuses. For them freedom is a blessing, not a curse.

Freedom is the nucleus of the human spirit. Even the man who denies his freedom asserts it at the same time. Try as he will, he cannot really avoid the act of choice and the responsibility which it entails. The best he can accomplish is to pretend he is unfree. He asserts he is a mere thing created by the whims of others. This does not transform him into a thing like other inanimate objects, of course. It only masks his dignity and plays into the hands not only of his self-deception, but also of those who benefit from manipulating him. While the casual observer might see this as a win/win situation, the exact opposite is true.

Everyone loses in the long run. The individual is deceived and loses his sense of self-worth, power and importance. He comes to feel, slowly, that he is nothing but a cog in a huge wheel. His negative belief has its own special effect. He eventually loses his ability to discriminate truth from falsehood. He experienced an actual loss of all he once held dear. Meanwhile, the social organizations - individuals and institutions that benefit from such self-deception - rot from within. In cooperating with such untruth, they betray themselves and undermine their foundations, destroying whatever integrity might have once been present.

On the positive side, however, the reverse is true when individuals get in touch with their freedom, creativity and power. While they may be difficult for the tyrant to defeat and the liar to mislead, these people form the basis for any democratic society. The lover of real choice and personal liberty encourages their self-discovery. For such people, success is defined in terms of more enlightened principles.

No longer narrowly selfish, they consider the larger repercussions of their actions. The voyage within also reveals connections to the larger world. Rather than cutting you off from your neighbor, such explorations solidify your sense of true community, and make clear to other people's rights and freedoms as much as your own.

The word "why" has a revolutionary power locked within it. By using it judiciously, you can unlock secrets from your psyche and from society beyond and from Nature itself. Use it frequently and be suspicious of anyone who would have you put it aside. Though we may not always be able to obtain answers to our most persistent "whys," we must continue to ask. Continue to seek, question and examine. It was not only Socrates who claimed, "The unexamined life is not worth living." It is anyone wise enough to see what is truly involved in this outlook.

Be especially stubborn when it comes to questioning yourself. Ask why you did what you did and why you failed to act. Ask why you do what you do and why you feel this way. It is not the question or the answer that is always important; it is often the attitude that is most important.

A questioning attitude is an open attitude, a receptive outlook, which encourages creativity, originality and new approaches to old problems. The great inventors, entrepreneurs, explorers and founders of institutions all asked "why" or why not." They left their mark on history because of it.

You may not become the subject of historians because you pursue your "why" questions, but you will make a difference in your own history. When it comes down to it that is more important anyway. Could you call yourself a success if you died never knowing whom you really were? No. Self-discovery and success are intertwined. In pursuing seemingly trivial "why" questions, you will be launching the very study that will propel you as nothing has done yet. It may trigger that new invention, that billion dollar idea, or that invaluable concept that revolutionizes your life. This cannot happen when the "whys" stop.

One of the most important new habits to develop is a different way of seeing things, a more balanced outlook than you had been using before. As far as the optometrist is concerned, there are two extremes of human eyesight, near-sightedness and far-sightedness. These terms can also be used to describe the ways we perceive the world around us - basic approaches to your personal and professional life. What does each involve?
The near-sighted individual, as the term is being used here, is too close to things in his or her life, too caught up in small details, mundane little facts which can get in the way of a wider vision. Immediate consequences are so central in this person's outlook that everything else escapes attention. While this might be acceptable for arriving at short-term goals, it totally obscures long-term goals and objectives. It also makes it impossible for such an individual to appreciate more innovative ideas, revolutionary suggestions and more far-reaching changes.

The far-sighted person, on the other hand, is good at the more long-term way of seeing things but does not handle well the little details of everyday life. While in some ways this person might be called a visionary, he suffers from what many historical geniuses lacked: the ability to deal with the immediate practical. This includes those often annoying, but important, little tasks, which have to be dealt with on a daily, hourly or even minute-by-minute basis.

Let us look at an example of each personality type:
A near-sighted person working in a business is the wrong person to ask to approve a break through project. His head is too stuck in being sure daily manufacturing quotas are met, sales figures tabulated, and so forth. In fact, he may be so absorbed in the daily routine that long-term trends are missed entirely. The whole business could be drifting toward total financial collapse and he might well not even notice. If things look good up close, that is usually enough for him. The "Big Picture" is not part of his outlook. While such a person might be a good assistant and loyal employee, he would be a poor choice for a leadership position -especially one requiring vision and the ability to develop new directions for company policy.

The far-sighted person, on the other hand, might have great ideas for a whole new product line; yet his inability to consider all the little steps to get from here to there could abort the entire project. By not knowing or caring about the steps and cost involved in a new manufacturing process, for example, he could be setting his company up for financial ruin, should it be foolish enough to follow his advice without careful analysis and thought.

So, which outlook is best? Obviously, a combination of the two. Only then can the combination of long-term and short-term goals be achieved and a balance struck between the mundane and the visionary. John Dewey once spoke of "flights and "perches." The "flight" aspect of human behavior is when our mind soars high in the heavens, looking down on the Earth far below and seeing things in a broader perspective. This is a beautiful way of looking at things, to be sure, and an exhilarating experience, needed to restore our sense of hope, enthusiasm and perspective, but if we stay in the mode, nothing gets done on the ground, and the daily necessities of life never get handled. After all, even the hawk and eagle need to swoop to the ground below sometimes, if only to visit its nest or grasp some unwary prey in its sharp talons.

If we stay on the "perch," however, we get stuck in the particular, the specific, and our vision becomes narrower with each passing day and we forget about big issues, more global concerns and questions, which ought to play some part in our plans and activities. Perhaps the ecological crisis now faced by our planet provides a good example of such an outlook. Just looking at production charts and sales quotes has not protected our environment. These are equivalent to remaining on the "porch" too long, and look what has happened. Our lakes and rivers are becoming dangerously polluted, acid rains touch almost every corner of the globe, toxins are found in our food, water and air. Why? Because too many forgot to keep the Big Picture in mind. Reversing the situation for a moment, the opposite could take place.

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