Your Chances of Success

Words that other people speak only have power if we give them. The Words we speak can either empower or defeat us before we even start.

I use the above chart with everyone but mostly my younger/adolescent students. Honestly hearing anyone say I can’t makes my blood boil, nothing is harder to overcome than someone suffering from Self-Fulfilling Prophesy Syndrome (SFPS). This is an acronym I coined for people crippled by “can’t“. It is a play on an Military/Engineering term “Single Failure Point Summary“. The use of words like “can’t” and “don’t know” and “might” definitely lead to a “Single Failure Point”… YOU, what it really points to is your own decision to live your “Self-Fulfilling Prophesy“. Your belief that you are unable to do something. It exposes your lack of self-confidence, your lack of courage and/or your lack of the desire to do something. Through one of these your subconscious sets you up to fail so you live down to your expectations.

This is very common in young children, often you will see a young kid purposely fail at something they are more than capable of doing so they can get attention or get someone else to do it for them. Often they do it because failure is easier than trying to succeed, if unchecked this can lead to terminal failure later in life. The good news: it is never to late to overcome SFPS! We have free will, we can choose to throw ourselves at success and prove our metal.

Like all great things in life, the Martial Arts forces us to focus and understand ourselves. First, physically and as we master it, mentally. At each step we become more aware of why we do things and through that gain control over them to varying degrees. Students that flinch when they begin to spar is pretty typical. Recognizing you are flinching and forcing yourself not to flinch requires awareness and control. The same is true with Failure and Success.

What are you going to do?
Live Down to your expectations?
or
Give it your all and do things that surprise even you?
If you choose the latter than your success or failure isn’t important, because even if you fail you will have accomplished more than you would have otherwise.

I have written about this before here.

Here is another interesting take on this topic focused around addition.

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