13 Things Mentally Strong People Don\'t Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success pdfdrive com

TROUBLESHOOTING AND COMMON TRAPS

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Sometimes it’s easy to avoid feeling resentful of others when you’re doing really
well. But there will likely be times in life where you’re going to struggle. That’s
when it can be most difficult to not resent other people. It takes hard work and
persistence to keep your feelings in check when you’re struggling to reach your
goals while those around you are reaching theirs.
WHAT’S HELPFUL
Creating your own definition of success
Replacing negative thoughts that breed resentment with more rational
thoughts
Celebrating other people’s accomplishments
Focusing on your strengths
Cooperating rather than competing with everyone
WHAT’S NOT HELPFUL
Chasing after everyone else’s dreams
Imagining how much better everyone else’s lives are
Constantly comparing yourself to everyone around you
Diminishing other people’s achievements
Treating everyone like they’re your direct competition

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CHAPTER 10
THEY DON’T GIVE UP AFTER THE FIRST
FAILURE
Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure
also avoid success.
—ROBERT T. KIYOSAKI
Susan came to see me for counseling because she said she felt like her life wasn’t
as fulfilling as she thought it should be. She was happily married and she and
her husband had a beautiful two-year-old little girl. Susan had a stable job as a
receptionist at the local school and she and her husband were doing just fine
financially. Susan said she actually felt a little selfish for not feeling happier,
because she knew she had a good life.
During the first couple of therapy sessions, Susan revealed that she had
always wanted to be a teacher. After high school, she’d actually gone on to study
education in college. Even though the university she had attended was only a few
hours away from home, she was miserably homesick. She was painfully shy and
she struggled to make new friends. She found the classes to be difficult and
overwhelming. So, halfway through her first semester, Susan dropped out of
college.

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Shortly after returning home, she got the school receptionist job and she’d
worked there ever since. Although it wasn’t her dream job, she thought it was as
close to becoming a teacher as she’d ever get. But it was clear from talking to
Susan that she still yearned to be a teacher. She just didn’t have the confidence
that she could do it.
When I first broached the subject of going back to college, Susan insisted she
was too old. But she changed her mind when I showed her a recent news
headline about a woman who earned her high school diploma at the age of
ninety-four. We spent the next few weeks talking about what held her back from
studying education. She said that she had simply decided that she wasn’t
“college material.” After all, she’d failed the first time and she felt certain she
wasn’t smart enough to pass college classes now that she’d been out of school
for so long.
Over the next few weeks, we discussed her thoughts about failure and whether
it was true that if she failed once, she’d fail again. We discovered an obvious
pattern in Susan’s life—whenever she wasn’t successful on her first attempt at
anything, she gave up. When she didn’t make her high school basketball team,
she quit playing sports. When she gained back the fifteen pounds she’d lost
dieting, she quit trying to lose weight. The list went on as she discovered how her
beliefs about failure influenced her choices.
In the meantime, I encouraged her to look around at college options, even if
she never planned to go to school, because college has changed a lot in the last
fifteen years. She was pleased to discover that there were many alternatives to
being a full-time college student, and within a matter of weeks, she signed up to
take some online college classes. She was thrilled to think that classes wouldn’t
require much time away from her family and she could attend on a part-time
basis.
Soon after she began taking classes, she announced that she felt like she’d
found what was missing. Simply working toward a new professional goal seemed
to be just the challenge she needed to help her feel fulfilled. She ended therapy
shortly after with a new sense of hope about her future and a new outlook on
failure.
IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED . . .

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While some people are motivated by failure to do better the next time, other
people simply give up. Do any of these points resonate with you?
You worry about being perceived as a failure by other people.
You only like to participate in things where you’re likely to excel.
If your first attempt at something doesn’t work out well, you’re not likely to
try again.
You believe the most successful people were born with the natural talent to
succeed.
There are plenty of things that you don’t think you could ever learn to do, no
matter how hard you try.
Much of your self-worth is linked to your ability to succeed.
The thought of failing feels very unsettling.
You tend to make excuses for your failure.
You would rather show off the skills you already have than try to learn new
skills.
Failure doesn’t have to be the end. In fact, most successful people treat failure
as just the beginning of a long journey to success.