Name: Steve Mensing
Topic: Cyndy & Failure
Sent: 16.55 - 3/14 2001
Cyndy:

A Personality Cluster is a clustering of beliefs that forms an identity. In my post to Failure below I'll list the Personality Cluster for Failure. Clearing out the beliefs in this category will undo the failure identity. This is likely easier for folks than clearing an entire identity in one gulp. Identities tend to have complex aspects and are challenging to do in their entirety with one gulp processes. Breath tech can do this much like a water vacuum cleaner taking on a spill. However I find it's easier for folks to take the one belief at a time approach to clearing a Personality Cluster. Clearing someone who has a felt sense of the belief may trigger incidents spontaniously where these IDs were formed and the whole identity blows out like a cheap birthday candle.

Failure:

Feeling like a failure is very painful and a common plague to many. Failure also haunts succesful folks as well. Movie stars and pop singers, who have "made it", complain of still feeling like failures and imposters.

Here is a Personality Cluster for Failure. This particular cluster provides us with a sense that we will fail at everything we try because we are dull, inept, unskilled, or untalented. Beliefs are:

* I can't perform as well as others.
* I'm a failure.
* Methods may work for others, but they'll never work for me.
* I'm no good at anything so why even bother.
* Whatever I do is doomed.
* Others are more capable than I am.
* If I failed once I will always fail.
* I lack the talent and skills that other people have.
* My failures haunt me--why would I want to go through failure again?
* Other people are much more successful than I.
* Even if I succeed, I'm an imposter because I am really a failure.
* I've got nothing but bad luck.
* Trying only leads to more humiliation. Why bother?
* The universe has willed me to failure.
* My past life karma is here to collect.

Failure: if any of the above beliefs seem to fit, then you may want to clear them with any tech with which you feel comfortable. Feel free to change the language of any of the above beliefs to make them a better fit.

Our sense of failure can arrive from many quarters. We may have had parents who were hypercritical of our performances at school. We may still hear expressions like "Dumbo", "Stupid", "Yo lunkhead" echoing in our memories.

Sometimes we may have successful brothers, sisters, and parents and we might make that comparison which gets the failure ball rolling. Even worse we may have had parents who didn't give a hoot about our performance in school or sports and this could set the failure challenge in motion. We may have done poorly in school and compared ourselves with other kids. LD kids often have to put up with this secondary issue. Also not having limits set for you or having discipline in our upbringing can put us in line for a fall.

Failing or a sense of failure is based on some major distortions. These distortions are labels that don't cover all our behaviors.

To label ourself a failure is to not take into account that we obviously have done some things right or successfully even if it may just be tieing our shoes or turning off the lights. When we believe we're failures we often rule out many of the successes we have had. We look back through the glass darkly. Depressed folks will often report nothing but failures even though a closer examination will show some successful endevours.

The sense of failure distorts the picture. It freeze frames a situation and makes mistakes and errors look as if they were for alltime and can't be undone. Folks who operate from more postive frameworks will mark off when things didn't work out as learning experiences or calls for changes in how we operate.

Mack reported the other night about some businesses that went South on him, but I'm sure he just regarded them as bumps in the road or signals that he needed to do things differently.

Martin Seligman wrote a great little book on emotional resiliancy in the face of adversity. A lot of succesful folks have run into roadblocks, but they tended not to see the these challenges as being forever. They saw them as instructive bits of evidence that they needed to do things differently.

You may want to take out that simple Relabeling Process on the tech page and apply it to any stinging roadblocks you may have encountered. Look for what's learnable and valuable in those situations.

Folks who believe they are failures and everything they touch turns to stone will often procrastinate or not even bother. It is important to take action on important callings no matter how badly we feel. Getting up and doing gives us control, changes our feelings states, and gets stuff done.

Some areas of corrective action with failure are:

* Learn skills that will help take you out of a rut and apply them.

* Consider doing activities which match your talents and then do them.

* Sometimes we need to work our way up the ladder, avoiding it can be more painful because it can put us on the periphery of what we'd really like to do.

* Handle any procrastination and tardiness issues if you're working for others. We can set our clocks and follow through on agreed upon times.

* Check out those areas of your life you may tend to minimize. Appreciate those things that do work for you. Ask yourself: "What works?"

* Become aware of your abilities, skills, talents, and achievements. Make lists of them and check them out.

* Observe what has worked successfully in your life. Can you replicate more of the same? How?

* If you see patterns of socalled failure, see how you can alter or interrupt those patterns. All patterns are alterable.

* Leave yourself open to mentoring and feedback.

* Screw preordained life and being born under a bad sign. They're lousy excuses to live with distorted beliefs. Ruts can be filled in with concrete effort and new ways of seeing.

* Change is inevitable.

* We can also set aside living by success or failure. We can choose to live through vitally absorbing and meaningful activity. Even if it feels like we're dwelling in a concentration camp, we can still plant flowers, do well by others, and take up meanignful activities. Eventually we can overwhelm the guards and liberate ourselves by our focus and efforts.

Take care, Steve