Maybe you are NOT SUCCESSFUL because you are thinking about it too much.
Do you feel like you are trapped in a counterintuitive loop?Β Running after success and never seeming to get some.
The more you aim at success, explains Viktor Frankl, the more you’re going to miss it.Β Let me tell you his story.
Viktor E. Frankl was a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps and a psychiatrist.Β He is most know for his best-selling book, Man’s Search for Meaning, which is both a chronicle of his time in the concentration camps and the lessons of personal psychology he learned through his experiences.Β The life-perspective he shares is valuable and fascinating.
In the latests edition to his book, he ponders on why this of all his books was so successful.Β It has sold over 10 million copies and is available in 24 languages.Β He wrote it in 9 days, and initially intended to publish it anonymously.Β He wanted to publish anonymously to disavow all fame and express his intent to benefit an imagined reader who suffers from lack of meaning in life. At the last minute before the book went to press, his friends prevailed upon him to add his name to the title page.Β And thus, this monumental addition to personal development literature was born – and unintentional success along with it.
It was this success, muses Frankl, that arose out of forgetting about it and focusing on serving others by sharing with them his experience and the lessons he learned.Β He tells his students.. (and I quote from his preface)
βDon’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-runβin the long-run, I say!βsuccess will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about itβ β Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
>>>Lesson learned: focus on creating results and value for others and personal success will come.
I think I have been focusing on success and thinking about it really too much.Β I tend to overthink things.Β So, why is this?
You know the saying that “where the focus goes, energy flows”?Β So, if you are thinking about success, then why wouldn’t that grow?Β I suppose it’s like when you are focusing on paying off debt, you will always have debt to pay off.Β Your subconscious mind knows that to be paying off debt, you need debt, so it will attract debt.Β It’s true.Β Try it sometime.Β T. Harv Eker talks about this principle in his book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.
It comes down to where, or what direction, you are truly focusing.Β When you are focusing on success, you are inwardly focusing.Β When you are focusing on yourself, you will lose your ability to grow through energy exchange.Β The book The Outward Mindset by The Arbinger Institute, goes into real detail about the principle of keeping an outward mindset.
Let’s imagine that your success is a treasure chest.Β If you just sit at home and stare at it, gold coins will not flow into it.Β But if you are focused on serving other people and giving value in a way that equally exchanges energies, such as charging for your goods or services, without knowing it or even focusing on it, coins will flow into your treasure chest.
So, these last few weeks, I was just focusing and focusing, thinking and thinking, trying to solve this puzzle, and thinking about how I can increase my rate of success and achievement in life.Β I though so hard that I got headaches.Β And I worked less and less.Β And when I did work, my heart wasn’t in it.Β I wasn’t truly serving my customer, I was focusing on my own issues, goals, and proverbial treasure chest.Β We have all probably been there.
So, this principle is kind of counter-intuitive.Β But not new.Β In the New Testament, a very old book, Jesus Christ, the main star, said, “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospelβs, the same shall save it.” (Mark 8:35.).Β Hmmm.Β That’s kinda the same principle Frankl was talking about.
It’s so easy to forget these lessons we learn.Β The goal here is to live them, internalize them, and become them.Β And that’s a new goal of mine:
Think less.Β Do more.Β Focus outward.Β Have faith energy will flow inward.
I really needed this lesson.Β And it came to me serendipitously.Β This week I got a message from Audible that now I get FREE Audiobooks with my Amazon Prime Membership.Β I saw this book by Viktor Frankl, which I read a long time ago.Β I downloaded it for free and started listening to it the next day.Β What an amazing book.Β You can get it here: https://amzn.to/3hRXXLk.Β Or you can get it for FREE here: https://amzn.to/2Frecha.Β The story I shared with you above is just one of the many amazing lessons in this book.
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