The Reason You Are In Danger of Failing and What To Do About It.

Everyday, I went to work. Everyday, I felt like a failure.

I’m a failure… I’m a failure… I’m a failure.

With each day the pain grew. I tried to avoid it, to deny it.

But soon it was too strong.

As I stood staring at myself in the mirror I couldn’t stop wondering:

“How did this happen?”

The Depression

3 years ago I was teaching in the inner city of Los Angeles, California. My job was sucking the life out of me. I was depressed, anxious, overwhelmed, unhappy.

To this day I can’t pinpoint the exact reason I felt this way.

Why do we always need a reason?

The reason is irrelevant – what matters is what I felt.

Let me be blunt: It sucked… HUGE MASSIVE DOG BALLS!

I Love My Mom

“Mom, I’m depressed. I hate this! I HATE MY JOB!”

“Izmael (my mom always calls me by my full name) focus on learning and improving.”

I’m in the midst of a freak out and my mother is telling me to learn…

“What?”

“You are trying to become perfect. Just Focus on getting better each day.”

…

…

That’s a good idea.

The Mindset That Saved My Life

I felt like my life was out of control, that there was nothing I could do.

I wanted to solve the problem immediately, a quick fix.

Unfortunately, that’s not how the game of life works.

The beauty of life lies in becoming a little bit better every single day. [Click to Tweet]

Over the next 6 months my mindset shifted.

My mother and father talked with me daily. Day after day I would come home, call my parents:

“Was today better than yesterday?”

When you face failure, struggle, or challenge you have two options:

1) Learn from it and adapt 2) Don’t learn from it and fail.

Pretty simple, right?

As I adopted a mindset of learning, I found purpose in my actions. I had control of my life. I felt empowered.

Over the past 3 years a learning mindset has allowed me to:

How To Develop The Mindset of Success

I’m wasting your time, if I tell you that the “learning mindset” is awesome but I don’t tell you how I have adopted it. As is always my policy: If I share it, I do it!

1. Always Focus on Learning

During that 4th year of teaching I felt like a failure… Initially.

But then my parents reminded me to focus on learning. Just being reminded that it wasn’t about “being the best” but instead “get a little better today” made a massive difference.

It’s simple – to develop a learning mindset you must focus on learning in every situation. [Click to Tweet]

Each and everyday we face situations and challenges that hurt, that bring us down, that knock the wind out of us. Yet, these are the moments of opportunity for the greatest learning.

Constantly step back and ask:

What can I learn from this?

2. Welcome Failure

Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM was asked “What is the formula for success?” He replied “You must double your rate of failure”.

Failure is beautiful because it gives you live, immediate feedback that what you are doing won’t work. Failure is natures way of telling us to stop, take a breath, and figure out what needs to be corrected.

When failure strikes keep asking yourself “What can I learn from this?”

Nobody bats 1.000. If you want to hit a homerun you have to step up to the plate. 

3. Refuse to Quit

People sometimes say to me “What if you fail and don’t achieve your dream?”

They don’t understand my mindset.

I refuse to quit.

I do not care what I have to go through.

This is my dream. I’m all in. I’m giving my life to martial arts.

I will allow nothing to stop me. Period.

A Dream requires the ultimate commitment… There is no “kind-of”. You’re either in or you’re out.

Which do you choose?

4. Have Faith in Personal Growth

I want to break a brick with my fist. I want to speak Japanese. I want to inspire people to follow their dreams.

Am I doing all of these things? NO… Not yet.

But someday, I will.

Everyday I focus on learning, on growing.

What I don’t know now, I will know then.

There is nothing wrong with “not knowing”. At some point we all “don’t know”.

I read a book every 10 days. I listen to inspiring audio everyday. I train in Aikido until my knees ache.

Each and everyday I am taking a step towards the person I want to become.

Do you have faith in your own potential?

5. Take Personal Responsibility… For Everything.

I can blame anyone I want. But here’s the thing: No matter who I blame I am still stuck in my situation. If it’s going to get better, it’s on me to make it happen.

When I was placed in the countryside of Japan I could have given up on my dream… But instead I took responsibility for improving my situation.

Look at your struggle, your challenge, your failures and ask yourself:

“How can I improve the situation?”

For The Comments:

What thoughts have you adopted that are holding you back? What mental adjustments can you make that can help push through this?

 

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  • Dan Garner

    “I wanted to solve the problem immediately, a quick fix.”

    As we all do. This was a major stumbling block for me for the first 20 years of my adult life. I did not take the time to develop anything that took long concentrated effort. I now try to be more patient. I’ve taken up bonsai, food curing, and building a blog – all of which take patience. I try to be mindful and patient every day. It is opening up new worlds.

    Dan @ ZenPresence . com

    • http://www.30yearoldninja.com/ Izmael Arkin

      It blows my mind how simple yet powerful it is :) . I love your point Dan! ” I did not take the time to develop anything that took long concentrated effort. I now try to be more patient.” When we are willing to take a long term approach while simultaneously focusing on the daily actions to move us towards that goal it becomes crazy powerful.

  • SC

    “Refuse to quit” confuses me. As a parent, had to quit my dream (sailing around the world on my boyfriends boat, I wrote you a big long letter about it…) because parenting came first. I “could have” lost custody of my kids, given them to some unknown family member or something but that would be abuse! So refusing to quit makes sense if you don’t have to look out for anybody but number one. On the other hand it’s hard for me to believe I just have to sacrifice 20 years of my life to depression and unhappiness to get these kids to adulthood and THEN I get to have a life. Confused. Also the question ” do you have faith in your potential” hell no! How do you get some of that? I’d really love to know.

    • http://www.30yearoldninja.com/ Izmael Arkin

      Hi SC :) .

      Here is the thing about “refusing to quit” – in no way did I say this is easy! In fact, it is drastically harder to follow your dreams than it is to quit them. I can quit today (BUT I WON’T!). At any point in time we can throw in the towel.

      Ofte we see our situation as “option A” or “option B” . What you have put forth sounds like Option A- you follow your dream and completely lose custody of your kids or Option B – Follow your dream and lose your kids. Take a look at those – I am one hundred percent sure there is a middle ground where you can pursue your dream with your children.

      Every person’s situation is unique. The second we start claiming “other have it easy and I have it so hard” we begin to create excuses for ourselves. I’m not saying this isn’t true. It is very likely that your situation is drastically tougher than mine – but really, it’s irrelevant because we are where we are. The key is to focus on “How?”

      In regards to “faith in your potential” that begins by taking action. You have to identify the first step you want to move towards your dream and then take that step. As you begin to see success you will start to increase your sense of belief. Also, who you surround yourself with, what you read, and who you listen to makes a massive difference in your sense of belief.

      P.S – I got your email. I will respond soon. I first want to think about what you wrote :) .

  • Manas Najmuddeen

    Thanks for the post. It all make sense if we follow your story from the beginning. Anyway, I was wandering how you read a book every 10 days. Its just amazing. Can you give me some advice on how to achieve that?

    • http://www.30yearoldninja.com/ Izmael Arkin

      Hi Manas :) . Great to hear from you!

      There are a few things that I do that make this possible. First off, reading is part of my morning routine. I wake up and listen to educational audio while I make breakfast and get my things ready. After that I sit down and read 30 to 60 minutes. A while ago I read a book on Speed Reading. It is called: Breakthrough Rapid Reading.

      That book completely changed my life. I now read at about 2.5 to 3x (I read 450 to 600 WPM depending on the writing style) the rate at which the average person reads. As you could probably put together if a person reads 30 to 60 minutes everyday and they read 2.5 to 3x the average rate they will finish quite a few books :) .

      Does this make sense?

  • Sean

    Hey Izzy. I’m curious about how you view the term “potential”.

    When I read the statement “Do you have faith in your own potential?” my immediate response was “No! I have faith in my current abilities and a drive to challenge them.” I guess it’s because I view the term “potential” as a bad word. One of my old music teachers/friends once said to me: ‘When someone tells you “you have potential”, you ought to take it as an insult – it means that you aren’t playing to the best of your abilities.’

    Most people mean well when they use the term “potential” and are being complimentary when saying “You have potential”. I would never openly react as if someone had insulted me (they aren’t trying to).

    But to this day I still hear that term as if someone were instead saying “I know you’re better than that. Stop slacking off.” As if it were a silent challenge to my work ethic and focus.

    • http://www.30yearoldninja.com/ Izmael Arkin

      Very interesting question and point Sean.

      I think the meaning of potential changes based on the context it’s used in.

      When I speak of potential I am talking about being aware of your incredible ability to do amazing things!

      If someone else says to me “You have potential.” It means nothing to me – We all have potential!

      It doesn’t matter if others believe in our potential, what matters is that we believe in our potential.

      Believing in our own potential is the exact same thing as believing in ourselves. Does this make sense?

  • http://twitter.com/GwynMinerva Minerva Gwyn

    Hi Izzy! When I was reading the part on refusing to quit, it came to my mind the excuses certain people find to stop pursuing their dreams. Those I’ve heard the most are “it’s hard”, “it’s painful”, “it makes me tired”. Those are thoughts that have been on my mind a lot lately. This is my third week waking up at 5am every Saturday and Sunday, and I’ll be doing the same on Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and all the other holidays to come in order to work on my dreams. I have to wake up at that time every weekday to go to work, so when I thought about doing this, I thought “why the heck not? I don’t like my job but I need it to pay my bills, and I stand the pain of sleeping little and feeling tired the whole day for it, why can’t I do that in the weekends/holidays too to work on what I love?”

    And as you know from your experience, and probably others here know as well, doing that, doing that is indeed “hard”, “painful”, and it “makes us tired”, but why should that be a reason to quit? For years, I gave up on following my dreams exactly for those reasons, and I only felt more miserable. So, what I’ve been telling myself lately is “embrace the pain. It doesn’t matter that it hurts”.

    There’s a little story about the great painter Renoir’s last years. He was suffering from arthritis in his hands, feeling terrible pain, he couldn’t even hold a brush in his hand anymore, he had to have it strapped to his arm, still he painted masterpieces. To a friend, who asked why he kept on painting, he replied: “The pain passes, but the beauty remains”. Isn’t that why we struggle today to create something better in our lives? Pain and sacrifice don’t matter. Suffering for something we believe in is way better than suffering for “the grind”.

    Thanks for another great post! :)

    • http://www.30yearoldninja.com/ Izmael Arkin

      Wow Minerva you are bringing it all to a whole new level :) . Amazing comment.

      I love this line: “Suffering for something we believe in is way better than suffering for “the grind”.”

      I heard a quote from Jim Rohn recently. He said “We all must face 1 of 2 pains in our lives: The pain of discipline or the pain of regret.”

      When I heard that quote I had to take a seat. I kept playing it over and over.

      I have a question for you Minerva: What do yo enjoy about waking up at 5am? Why do you do it? There is a deeper reason that you do it! Do you know what it is? (I know the response to this can be personal so feel free to email me your thoughts: izzy@30yearoldninja.com )

  • Tomo

    Hi Izzy.

    Fear holds me back. Fear for the unknown outcome of big changes. To get out of the comfort zone, ( even if it isn´t any comfortable ). It´s easier to ” play it safe” rather than “go for it”.

    I´ve been forced to big change in life not so long ago and even if it was hard in many ways in the beginning I decided not to be a victim of the
    circumstances, I finally took responsibility for my life-situation and at that point my life totally went better and better and led to a new path – a very good one. Unluckily I wasn´t strong enough to stay at the good path, other circumstances as illness forced me back to the old path and I´m like back to square one….feeling fear to make the change again even though I know I´m strong and capable to do it….fear holds me back.

    Maybe it is like the quote that ” we don´t fear our weakness, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure”.

    Thanks for the post.

    P n´L

    • http://www.30yearoldninja.com/ Izmael Arkin

      Hi Tomo :) .

      You said a line that was extremely powerful: “, I finally took responsibility for my life-situation and at that point my life totally went better and better and led to a new path – a very good one.”

      Tomo, this is critical that you recognize this! You know without question you can take complete control of your life, because you have done it before.

      Here are 2 questions that can help you:
      1. Why were you able to take control of your life? (Identify the reason and then repeat it).
      2. What barrier stopped you last time? (If you can identify the barrier you can come up with a plan to get around it).

      If you need to really break it down shoot me an email at izzy@30yearoldninja.com and we can run through it.

  • Caylie Price

    Hi Izzy,
    I loved this article and truly understand where Dan is coming from. I also followed the path of “it must work right now, otherwise I quit” for a long time. I’ve had to learn to stop “headbutting” challenges/blocks/overwhelm and learn to step back asking “what is one little action I could take to get closer to my goal?” along with accepting I don’t have to know how to do everything before I start.
    Gratefully I’ve become far more patient and in partnership with a friend just launched my first ebook and resource pack. Yep, the feeling you get knowing you’ve “done it” really is the best and worth all the hard work.
    Best wishes for 2013!
    Caylie

    • http://www.30yearoldninja.com/ Izmael Arkin

      Hi Caylie!

      That is such a freaking awesome transition you have made! It’s crazy powerful once we start taking action and making things happen. Just as you pointed out – we don’t need to figure out step 8 when we’re only on step 1 :) .

      I’m really glad you enjoyed the article :) . If you ever got any questions about staying motivated feel free to email me at izzy@30yearoldninja.com