So don’t make the mistake of tolerating a sense of hopeless, halfhearted “try-ing” in any part of your world. Success or failure that begins in one area of your life tends to naturally spill over into other areas. Keep in mind that both the feeling of winning and the feeling of losing are totally contagious. Continue exercising your success muscles this way, knocking out doable goals daily for a couple of weeks, and soon your entire life will feel different. And then, with single-minded focus and complete commitment - right away, so you can’t forget or get distracted - go do it.Ĭhalk up that success, feel it, and then set another, slightly bigger goal. Start with one very doable, immediate goal - something you can do today (self-care fundamentals like drinking an extra glass of water, eating some fresh vegetables or getting some activity can be a good place to start). So if you’ve been struggling to make any meaningful progress on a goal for a long time, or if you are lacking confidence that you’ll ever get there, it’s important to create some “starter successes” that help you amplify your belief that you can do whatever you set your mind to. That said, success is a little like sourdough: If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll need a bit of a colonizing bacterial culture to get the desired reaction started. If you think you might win, you will lose. It works like this: If you know you will win, you might win. But I would argue that they are essential ingredients. The people who absolutely believe they can do something are the ones who commit themselves so fully that they ultimately can’t help but succeed.ĭo confidence and optimism guarantee success in all things? Of course not. People tend to think that when they are successful, they will feel confident, but I really think it works the other way around. I hope he achieved something great, but unless he experienced some kind of break-through in his outlook, I suspect he’s still stuck in neutral. It also pulled down the people around him.Įventually, this young man moved on to a different job. It diminished his confidence and energy, and scattered his attention.

He advertised his worst fears rather than articulating his most inspiring hopes. But he stressed about every bad indicator, and saw the shadow of his own self-doubt lurking around every corner. “I’m trying,” he’d say.Īnd there was no doubt that this guy took his efforts seriously. But every time he got a shot at a really important endeavor, he put all of his attention on worrying about whether or not he’d be able to pull it off - rather than envisioning his success and focusing on how he’d go about achieving it. He desperately wanted a shot at success, and he was a hard worker. I remember a young employee I had years ago. We don’t really know what life is going to be like out beyond our next meaningful achievement.įrankly, it can feel a whole lot safer and more familiar on this side of our excuses for why what we most want in life can’t possibly happen. We know what it’s like where we are, even if it’s painful and frustrating. So why do many of us continue to be stubbornly attached to toiling away in the “try” state? I suspect that part of it is fear of the unknown. In my experience, if you’re hopelessly or halfheartedly trying - expending your energy without a powerful sense of connection to a positive outcome - you might as well not try at all.

“Try” is a state of effort without complete intention and commitment - and so it generally turns out to be little more than a way station on the road to failure. But I think that, far too often, that’s a cop out. We love saying that “we’ll try,” as a way of implying that we’re agreeing to work on something. You either decide to do something and immediately begin doing it, or you don’t. Yoda’s quirky syntax notwithstanding, the message here is clear: Our ability to achieve a particular goal hinges mightily on our belief that we can, and on our determination that we will. But I think many of us have yet to realize how relevant and evergreen the lesson is in our own lives. That message triggered something extraordinary in Luke, of course, empowering him to harness “the Force” and master his own internal resources. It’s a bit of timeless wisdom perhaps best immortalized by the Star Wars character Yoda, who bestowed it upon a young Luke Skywalker - and by extension, the rest of us: “Do or do not,” Yoda said.

The power of optimism