You'll get into a lot of trouble for suggesting this, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achievement_ideology
Wrong ideas deserve trouble.
Success depends on emotion management
21–30 of 58 posts
Re: Success depends on emotion management
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand what you're saying, but honest question: why is it helpful to add this caveat?
Because "your attitude determines your success" explicitly states that if you fail it is because of your attitude. People fail for many reasons, usually a combination of reasons. Attitude is just one factor. It is very comforting for people who are high on the social ladder to believe in a meritocracy: it lets one their successes are due to their superior character, and those who are on the bottom of the ladder are t…
It doesn't say anything about the inverse. You can simultaneously believe success is determined by yourself and failures are just bad luck. It's positive thinking. Some enjoy it, some don't.
Re: Success depends on emotion management
#23Good point people are making that attitude is not the whole story.
But it does seem that many are not aware that perseverance is such a large part of anything. Before you get to perseverance even, there is the desire to try. A lot of projects are dismissed before they are even started as being too difficult or impractical.
One tendency that I have, which I assume other people have also, is that in certain areas that I am invested in, I am happy to keep working on a project despite many small or large setbacks. I generally don't consider them to be a big deal. But other areas, such as cooking or promotion, I put a minimal amount of effort in and find it difficult to find motivation to continue when I have a setback or poor result.
Part of it is my expectation for how hard things are. Some things that I am not particularly familiar with, I kind of expect to be fairly straightforward. But I am starting to think that almost every type of task is going to have setbacks and require perseverance to get good results. Which is good news, because it gives me hope that if I can be persistent when approaching those types of problems, I can be just as successful as I am with programming (when I don't give up).
Re: Success depends on emotion management
#24Please can people stop using absolutist epithets like this. Managing your attitude, emotions, and the stories you tell yourself will help a lot . If you do it badly, it will increase your chances of failure. Doing it well will not determine your success. That’s just magical thinking. It will predispose you for success if the other conditions are right for it , but nothing more.
I understand what you're saying, but honest question: why is it helpful to add this caveat?
> why is it helpful to add this caveat?
It's not really a caveat, though, is it? It's an entirely false premise, that intent & direction & purpose are irrelevant. That the primary factor that matters is attitude & self-belief. As commenter Zepto rightly pointed out, this article is proposing magical thinking: the conceit that what you want or what you think is the thing that shapes reality all about.
Besides being delusional, it also has all the other obviously bad impact that it's twin the Prosperity Gospel brings: those without riches & success have all failed to be worthy, are all faulty. No matter how hard you work, how good you try to be, judging in Attitude or Belief as the only/primary/core determiner of success doesn't allow for misfortune, or for it to be the world that was wrong. Often, the world _is_ wrong, and only those rebels that hold up their flame & let their light shine are what it takes, what makes humankind & the human spirit so great... but so often those folks are crushed, too. And not for a failure of attitude or belief, nor often strategy nor execution either. Hard things, sometimes, ought be tried & embarked upon, but to internalize success as the judgement of whether the hard thing was right or wrong? That is petty, small, and insufficient. It diminishes the light of the world to require & judge only by success.
Re: Success depends on emotion management
#25I self talk a lot to build confidence in myself. It worked. I now have too much confidence.
Re: Success depends on emotion management
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Telling young people that the world is ruled by a clique of powerful old white men who conspire to keep them oppressed must be crushing, especially if done incessantly. If you're a young white man with a fighting chance of becoming one of the next generation of powerful old white men, I can understand where you might find that unnecessarily demoralizing. But for everybody else, it's the bitter truth they neverthele…
Reminds me of reading a story someone wrote about the epiphany they had when their therapist finally told them "the world does not wake up in the morning to fuck you "
If I were a therapist, I'd probably have that made in vinyl and put on the ceiling over the couch.
Re: Success depends on emotion management
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because "your attitude determines your success" explicitly states that if you fail it is because of your attitude. People fail for many reasons, usually a combination of reasons. Attitude is just one factor. It is very comforting for people who are high on the social ladder to believe in a meritocracy: it lets one their successes are due to their superior character, and those who are on the bottom of the ladder are t…
It doesn't say anything about the inverse. You can simultaneously believe success is determined by yourself and failures are just bad luck. It's positive thinking. Some enjoy it, some don't.
You certainly _can_, and I'm all for positivity if it helps you, but don't you think there is a contradiction here?
Again, if it helps go right ahead.
Re: Success depends on emotion management
#28Please can people stop using absolutist epithets like this. Managing your attitude, emotions, and the stories you tell yourself will help a lot . If you do it badly, it will increase your chances of failure. Doing it well will not determine your success. That’s just magical thinking. It will predispose you for success if the other conditions are right for it , but nothing more.
There are millions of people having such problems with motivation, attitude and experience lack of success, so these kind of blogs give them exactly what they want to hear. I wasted ton of time on such publications as I was under impression that if only I change my thinking then suddenly I'll get on right track. Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. What helped me the most is realising that making mistakes is just…
That has been my experience as well. Be positive, but remove the stars in your eyes. Don't give up at the simplest failure, but also don't set unachievable goals that are clearly destined for failure (such as things that require pure luck).
Re: Success depends on emotion management
#29Please can people stop using absolutist epithets like this. Managing your attitude, emotions, and the stories you tell yourself will help a lot . If you do it badly, it will increase your chances of failure. Doing it well will not determine your success. That’s just magical thinking. It will predispose you for success if the other conditions are right for it , but nothing more.
I understand what you're saying, but honest question: why is it helpful to add this caveat?
Being positive through the bad times helps for long term achievement. Being naively positive through something that has clearly ended is just stupidity.
Re: Success depends on emotion management
#30I always feel like I'm not good enough but I'm also an optimist. I know that if I work at anything long enough I can do it.
I often know I'm not good enough, but I figure if they didn't fire me then clearly I'm good enough.