Are You Programmed to Fail?

Sales Machine recently received some comments from reader complaining about having to "click 10 times" in order to view a longish post. This kind of complaint is an outward sign of a way of thinking that automatically programs a person to fail. Let me explain.

Everybody has a set of arbitrary rules defining the meaning of events in their life. Most people don't set these rules consciously; instead, they just "grow" into them based on their temperament and upbringing. Because of this, many people have rules that tend to make them miserable.

I've known people who, in order to consider themselves really happy, must be on a wonderful vacation, win the lottery, fall in love, eats some rare delicacy, or some other unusual or even once-in-a-lifetime event.

In almost every case, these same people can find virtually any excuse to be miserable. If they miss a stop light, they get upset. If they can't get a jelly donut in the morning, they're upset. If they can't watch their favorite TV show, it ruins their day, etc., etc., etc. They have an endless list of tiny things that steal away their happiness.

People who have those rules about life, are programmed to be miserable, because they'll encounter dozens of things each day that irritate them, and very few events that will make them happy. And being unhappy or irritated most of the day is the ULTIMATE expression of failure in life.

Consider, then, somebody who complains about having to "click 10 times" to read a Sales Machine post. On the one hand, this person is getting information that could increase lifetime earnings by a million dollars. On the other hand, this person also has to move an index finger 10 times.

This is something to complain about???

The sad truth is that anybody whose priorities are that screwed up that "10 clicks" makes them upset enough to leave a comment is so completely programmed to fail that no amount of good information -- from this blog or anywhere else -- is going to keep them from failing.

The solution, of course, is to get off your emotional duff and start doing the hard work of changing your rules. Because here's the exciting thing: if you switch the two sets around, you're re-programming yourself to be happy, and therefore to win.

Want to be successful? Here's how:

• Decide to have rules that make it easy to be happy. Let little things that happen every day be cause for celebration. Find every excuse possible to take a little pleasure out of life.
• Decide to have rules that make it difficult to be miserable. Save your misery for truly awful things, like the death of a close relative, financial disaster, or a major, debilitating illness.

It's up to you.

Now, that being said, there's a person hanging around in this post somewhere who badly needs to listen to his own advice. And that person would be me.

If complaining about 10 clicks is foolish, then there's more than a little foolishness in complaining about people who complain about 10 clicks. In fact, you could argue that the "second generation" of this is the apotheosis of foolishness.

So here's my promise to you guys. I'm going to stop filling up the comments of these posts with irritated comments when people request format changes that don't make sense to me. If anything, I'll just thank them for their input and move on to more productive work.

I want to be successful, and that means having "life rules" that make it harder for me to be irritated and easier for me to be happy.

So it's up to me, too. So please feel free to point out to me when I'm being petty, because I really would prefer not to be that way.

Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone.