It’s often easy to see other peoples’ internal strategies but it’s not nearly as simple to see your own. We all have failure strategies, by the way. You need to figure out what your own is. Maybe this will help give you insight.

My Own Failure Strategy

I’ve figured out my personal “failure strategy”. It runs often.  As I said, you might learn something if I share it with you; it goes something like this:

1. I think what I want, decide I am going to get it and tell myself that I am.
2. I immediately think of all the problems that stand in the way of getting what I want, knowing that if I cannot solve them, I will fail.
3. As I start to feel unsure about overcoming all obstacles in a timely manner, I start to feel unsure of myself. I begin to question my own judgment.
4. The uncertainty and complexity of solutions and the probability of failure starts to grow.
5. I make fitful efforts at thinking about the goal, pretending I’m still striving for it, talking to others as if I am, and I carry out desultory actions to achieve it.
6. I soon start to modify the goal either changing it into something more “realistic”, or start adding time modifiers that would soon kick it out of the game.
7. I know in my heart of hearts that I’m not hitting the bar for the effort required to succeed. Instead I get “tired”, disinterested, de-motivated and drink to forget the issues.
8. I remember my spectacular successes of the past and use that to congratulate myself for being brilliant.
9. I do not associate (NLP term) with the effort, integrity, focus, pleasure, ingenuity and continuous activity required that was the real reason for my successes, not my “brilliance”.
10. I constantly allow myself to get distracted with off-target diversions, all seeming necessary.
11. I sooner or later find a new goal that is exciting and inspiring and get involved with that.
12. I allow this to displace the original goal, which I discard or re-classify as “sometime-maybe”.
13. Eventually I lose sight of the goal and am not acting on it, without even admitting that I have quit!

Do I have A Success Strategy?

You bet I have. As a highly acclaimed individual, with an international voice and a considerable following, having done a great deal to change the face of medicine, I have a good strategy too, which works when I use it!

1. I think what I want, decide I am going to get it and tell myself that I am.
2. This time I figure out what is going to have to happen if I am to get my goal.
3. I start work on bringing into existence these elements.
4. I start to think what will have to cease, if I am going to achieve what it is I want.
5. I quickly get into action, doing more and more of the positive things and eliminating what will have to cease.
6. I structure what is important to do in sequence and understand why certain things depend on other things, in order to come about. In other words, I am logical and linear.
7. I lay out a probably time line. I work with that.
8. I also figure out what things can happen at any time, in any order. I start accessing these non-sequential items, grabbing opportunities as they come.
9. I decide for myself what sort of person/what attitudes are appropriate, in order the get what it is I want. I display these aspects of personality early on.
10. I identify what sort of personality traits are unhelpful or will lead to failure and start right away on eliminating these traits.
11.  I get hard to work on producing the actions that will lead to success.
12.  At all times, I grab what comes up that will suit my purpose, making notes and recordings, sometimes deep into the night. I let nothing slip by that is of good quality and contributory to my purpose. I write and write and write.
13.  I shut out all distractions and concentrate for long periods of time on doing what I need to do for success, even at the risk of being inefficient in other areas, missing opportunities or alienating people. I focus on NOTHING ELSE for requisite periods of time. I become totally un-accessible to family, friends and business contacts.
14.  I also refuse negatives, distractions, opinions and interference that would derail my purpose, even up to the point of being rude and telling people to “Pi** off” and “Get lost”. I may impatient and won’t listen to “reason”.
15.  I use all kinds of feedback to continuously check that what I am doing is leading to what I want and that it satisfies me. If it isn’t doing, I make course corrections.
16.  I play my intuition and hunches, letting higher power help me whenever that help is available.
17.  When I have done, I immediately set to work seeing if there are ways to improve what I have done, making it more valuable but also—very important to the way I think and feel—more attractive.
18.  I continuously hone and improve whatever I have that works, making it better and more valuable and attractive to others. This is a never-ending process.

You are privileged to share in this. Not many people would offer up they inner secrets. More importantly, of course, very few people know what an internal strategy is and could not begin to work out what it is they are really doing!

Hopefully, you will get the idea and begin to examine and test your internal strategies. They can be quite complex. The keynote is duplication: you are looking for something you do over and over, that patterns your life, not an occasional whim or experimental approach.

More Details

Actions around 2- 8 of the success strategy can be detailed as follows (makes a useful catechism for any wish):

What is going to have to happen if I am to get ____________________________ ?

What is going to have to cease if I am to get ______________________________ ?

[or What MUST happen? What MUST NOT happen?]_______________________?

What is important to put into a sequence if I am to reach ____________________ ?

What can be done at any time, in any order, if I am to reach __________________ ?

What sort of person/attitude will get what I want?____________________________?

What sort of person/attitude will fail to get what I want?_______________________?

Strategies vs. Affirmations

You need to be clear: affirmations are yesterday’s mind technology. They don’t work most of the time and for good reason. Affirming something is really affirming the opposite! Why do an affirmation that says “I’m rich”. Can’t you see, that’s affirming you don’t have money; otherwise why do you need the affirmation?

A better idea by far is about internal strategies and fixing those. You need to know how you are representing your success intentions inside because that will filter your world and what you see, selecting for the elements you are looking for.

And, yes, it works exactly the same way for the failure strategy! You look for what your strategy says comes next!