Category Archives: Success

How to fail –Getting F’s may be harder than you think

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Success or failure sign

Success or failure.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

All F’s are hard to get. Consistent repeated failure is harder than you think.

Every semester we who are teaching, have to put together a syllabus that describes the things the class will cover, what you have to do to get a particular grade, and the other things you need to know.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the rest of life came with that sort of clear directions?

How come we get a syllabus in college but not in life?

I have become convinced that many of the same factors that result in successes or failures in school also apply to life in general. There are certain things that will result in good grades and others that will result in consistent failure.

What surprises my students each semester is when I tell them that most of the time getting an F is more work than getting an A.

Here are things you will need to do to fail in school and these tips can help you fail in life if you so choose.

Drinking a lot of alcohol and doing a lot of drugs ensures failure.

Studies have consistently shown that the more drugs you do the lower your GPA. Drink enough and you will stop coming to class. Not showing up helps in your quest for failure.

There are lots of other escape mechanisms to let you run from your problems. Once you avoid a problem by using a crutch the problem gets bigger and you become more dependent on that crutch.

To avoid learning do not read the book or take notes.

Avoiding any new information assists in the art of failure. While you may not know enough to succeed you already know more than enough to fail.

This aversion to new knowledge can increase the chances of failure where ever you apply it. Jobs change so do relationships. The person who does not learn new job skills will become obsolete. The person who does not put anything into a relationship eventually finds the affection account has run dry.

Do not do the work and you are on the way to failure.

Work is an interference in the failure filled life. Do too much work and you might get something right. Those who do best at failure try the least.

Continue to insist that things should come your way by luck or as something you are owed. Never consider that effort could be necessary.

If by accident you did the homework, do not turn it in.

This is a sure-fire method for grabbing failure from the jaws of success. Leave the homework at home; keep that report in your desk until it is past the deadline. Never start anything until it is too late and you can avoid even the semblance of success.

If you do make some effort, minimize it, discount it, and avoid letting anyone see what you have worked on. In a failure filled life, it is necessary to keep your efforts a secret.

Miss as much class as possible; don’t show up for anything in life that matters.

Nothing so improves the probability of failure as to not be there when things are being done. Miss enough work and you will not need to come in anymore. Salesmen if you stop making calls you will be assured of a sales-free month.

Do not take any tests and you can’t ever pass one.

Avoiding any midterms or the final is a way to get the total points down below the passing level. Don’t show up for job interviews and you will not need to go to work. Avoid any evaluation and you will never have any big successes.

The consistent application of these principles will radically increase the chances you will have a life full of failure.

For maximum failure stop trying.

Still having a life full of deliberate failures may not make you a failure. To assure that you and others will consider your life a failure it is necessary to give up trying anything and everything and avoid all success no matter what the cost.

To begin to have a successful life do the opposite of these tips and begin to live your life by making the efforts needed to succeed. You might be pleasantly surprised how an occasional success can result in a positive attitude and that new improved attitude can result in a progressively longer string of success.

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Does the 4th of July need a corporate sponsor?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Fourth of July.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Who is the official sponsor of the 4th of July?

The celebration of the Fourth of July as Independence Day is uniquely American. In other countries, they mark their independence on different dates. People in some countries are conflicted or even downright ambivalent about independence day, they may be rid of a colonial or conquering power but they have not yet achieved any meaningful form of independence.

Regardless of the status of your freedom and rights, I suspect that you have seen plenty of commercial enterprises who want to become the official sponsor of most everything. We have Olympic sponsors. There are official beers, shoes, and cars for almost every event.

Do we, here in America, need an official sponsor of our Independence Day? Maybe we could pay off the national debt by auctioning off official sponsorships of this and other holidays. Is freedom insolvent and in need of an infusion of cash to prevent its demise?

The concept that our independence or freedom might be improved by becoming dependent on an official sponsor’s product is a bit confusing, but not much else about freedom makes any sense anymore.

There appear to be official sponsorships for sale on most every place or event that occurs. A sponsor can put their name on the local stadium or festival why not on a holiday?

A concerted effort to sell sponsorships might be extended to almost every social need.

How about an official sponsor for DUI’s? We have a number of unofficial sponsors but why not sell that right to one particular company?

How about official sponsors for prisons?  We seem to have self-proclaimed official sponsors of backyard barbecues and summer fun, though I am unsure who they paid to become an “Official Sponsor.”

I feel very certain that the signers of the declaration of independence had a clear idea of what they were declaring. From this hindsight position, there appears to be some confusion about just what independence means, let alone freedom.

I have my doubts that Samuel Adams or John Hancock expected independence to include a United colonial scribe listening in through their windows and recording their thoughts and words. Today, should those gentlemen have any progeny among us; those descendants routinely expect their government to listen in on their email and phone conversations.

Sometimes to protect freedom and independence you need to give up a lot of rights, or so we are told.

I do not recall any official sponsors of the constitutional convention or the declaration of independence. Perhaps we missed a bet?

In colonial times when the government extends an official right to be the exclusive supplier of something, this right was called a monopoly. That monopoly on tea is reported to have played a role in sparking America’s rebellion.

On my more cynical days, I am inclined to think that the American war of rebellion was also a war to preserve our uninterrupted access to drugs, stimulants in the form of tea.

Since monopolies have gotten a bad name we now call these exclusive rights by other names like “official sponsor” or “bidder’s preference.”

Those who are celebrating Independence Day here in America are not the only group who are moving towards selling official sponsorship rights. Neither the Pilgrims nor the followers of that Jesus guy had any plan, as far as I can see, to sell the commercial rights to their holidays but those days now would barely be functional without commercial sponsorships.

Despite all the apparent opportunities for a commercial sponsor on this Independence Day, I remain unconvinced that we will be any more independent or free for having an official sponsor or two for this celebration.

Having another furniture or used car sale by an official sponsor will not promote or establish anyone’s freedom.

Independence and freedom are bought and preserved by the sacrifices of patriots; however, you understand that patriotism, not bought and sold by the cash of official sponsors.

Here is hoping that each and every one of you is enjoying the blessings of freedom and independence on this day devoted to remembering what it cost to assure those rights.

(Personal aside: I wrote and scheduled this post on 6/30/13. Today while browsing I came across a website ad that said, – celebrate the Fourth of July – shop now. Someone is already into the holiday spirit or is it the holiday spirits?)

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Are you Playing the victim? Breaking free

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

The victim role.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

How does the victim role feel?

Some people are victimized and others become permanent victims. The more times you are knocked down the harder it may become to get back up. What you need to avoid is assuming that hopeless victim role.

Clients sometimes make sudden remarkable recoveries. Recently I had a client whose whole life seemed to make a sudden shift. One day they were depressed and hopeless and the next they were upbeat and hopeful.

I would love to take credit for this sudden change, but I have learned that ultimately the clients are in charge of their own recovery and I am just a tour guide on that journey.  So when this dramatic shift happens I want to know why.

What do you think they told me?

“I stopped playing the victim role” was the response.

So regardless of how dysfunctional their family of origin, no matter what their ex, had done, this client determined to not fill the victim role for them or anyone else. Starting that day their life was different.

Certainly, life’s troubles leave scars. We walk with a physical or an emotional limp, and those accumulated scars become a part of who we are. All my past experiences have made me who I am today. But what this client had suddenly realized was that those experiences do not need to define them. They can choose to wear that “victim role” hat or they can trade this role in for a “recovered person” hat.

One approach, the being a victim one, is looking back. Staying stuck in the past, arguing that it should not have been that way can keep you stuck for as long as you chose to stay there.

The other approach, looking forward, is full of hope. When we trade in that “hopeless victim” hat for the new “recovering person” hat we can become filled with hope and a positive attitude.

We see this over and over. Some people chose the victim of domestic violence or cancer hat and others pick up the survivor of domestic violence or cancer hat. The difference is one of attitude.

So in what ways have you been playing the victim? Are you ready to trade that part in for a new recovered person role? All you need to do is turn your head and look forward instead of back.

Best wishes on your journey to that happy life you deserve.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Success does not cure low self esteem

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Success

Success.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Racking up the successes may make your low self-esteem worse, not better.

You would think that people with a string of successes to their credit would feel good about themselves. Often this is not the case.

Olympic caliber athletes get depressed even suicidal; professionals in many fields suffer from low self-esteem.

The cause of this low self-esteem among high achievers is that ancient enemy – perfectionism.

Perfectionism destroys self-esteem.

The highly motivated student, the one with the all “A’s” on their record, if they were to just once get a B that would ruin their perfect record. Needing to be perfect is a way to overcompensate for feelings of inadequacy.

The way this works is one of the sneakiest of all possible manifestations of the fear of failure. Set impossible high goals and then if you fail to achieve them this is not your fault. Who could possibly be expected to be perfect?

The consequence of this setting yourself up to fail but making the goal beyond anyone’s reach is to feel that having not achieved perfection, not being the best at everything, you are worthless and nothing.

We saw in a previous post, it is not the all A student that is the happiest. The good-enough student, the B student, is far happier. So is the student who is self-motivated, who does things to satisfy themselves and learns for the sake of learning not the external motivation of grades.

Dr. Berry at U.C. Berkeley wrote an interesting paper on the causes of failure (Special Feature: Fear of Failure in the Student Experience, Personnel/ and Guidance Journal, 1975.) As I understand this article he understands perfectionists as being high in Fear of Failure.

Refusing compliments lowers self-esteem.

In my experience people who suffer from a strong case of perfectionism discount all compliments. They find it impossible to accept that any form of praise can be sincere and they find themselves unable to accept compliments. The inferences here is that for them to accept an accolade means they are in some way in control of and responsible for their success. If you accept success then you also assume responsibility for your failure and the one thing any good perfectionist does not want to do is set themselves up to have to acknowledge a failure.

Perfectionists do not hear praise, from themselves or others. What they do hear is the criticisms, real or implied. Since good is never good enough and nothing but perfect is acceptable any mention of a success risks being heard as a back-handed compliment. Yes you did well this time, but what did you expect, the task was easy. Or more importantly, what will you do next time? For the perfectionist, failure is nipping at their heels and success is a distant target off on the horizon.

They dismiss out of hand all compliments by hold onto and cherish the negative message that even they are not perfect and eventually will fail.

Dr. Berry tells the story of his experiences as a child, participating in a contest with friends to throw snowballs at a post. They picked a post that was extremely far away. The consequence of setting this impossible target? If you hit it, then it was just luck. If you miss it, it was so far away no one could be expected to hit it. Either way, you were expected to miss and therefore could not fail.

Perfectionists set up just such tests for themselves.

The purpose of aiming for perfection, so this theory of psychology and others goes, is to establish such unreasonably high standards that no one could be criticized for not meeting that goal. The perfectionist keeps on trying to reach perfection until one day they give up trying as impossible and drop out of school or other activities or they finally do fail and then ascribe their lack of success to the impossible expectations of others.

Do you fear failure? Are you setting yourself up with excuses that result in creating the failure you fear? What would it mean to you to set realistic goals and actually meet some of them?

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

6 Ways Fear of Failure prevents success

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Success or failure.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Fear of Failure wears disguises.

Some fear of failure may be protective; it gets us to do things we need to do and to avoid other dangerous things. But excessive fear of failure likes to wear disguises, that way it doesn’t get blamed for all the ways it prevents our successes.

1. Fear of failure is a primary cause of procrastination.

The longer you put off doing anything the more last-minute it is, the less responsibility you need to take for the results.

You can avoid some fear and anxiety by not doing the paper, project, or work-related task. Then when you do it last-minute you can say that this is not your best work. The procrastination has given you an out for why this project is not done well.

The result – you are not a failure when your task fails.

2. Fear of failure makes us missing in action.

Lots of people are so afraid that they will not do something perfectly that they do nothing. Similar to procrastination this method keeps us from feeling that it is our fault when we do not succeed. We didn’t do anything so there was nothing to fail at.

This is a large cause of writer’s block. If you are afraid that what you write today will not be any good, that is a good reason to not write anything today. Let’s face it, not all posts turn out to be great ones. Some don’t even make it to the so-so category.

String a row of days of non-writing together and you become a non-writer. No more negative comments or reviews.

3. We do the minimum to get by to avoid the fear of failure.

Fear of failure can also prevent us from sticking our necks out. If you do too much you get noticed. Do only the easy things, never aim too high and you can avoid a lot of failure in life.

Never volunteer an idea and you won’t get stuck doing the work. You won’t get the credit if it goes well but you also will not get the blame when it fails. It is a lot easier and safer to criticize others for why things went wrong than to risk yourself on trying to make things better.

Do the minimum and you also avoid any possibility of success.

4. We begin to look lazy and apathetic to avoid the fear of failure.

A similar strategy to doing the minimum is to pretend you do not care. If you do not care if you are inherently lazy and unconcerned, then how can anyone fault you for doing poorly at things you never cared about doing in the first place?

We expect nothing from lazy people and they customarily live down to our expectations. Stay lazy my friends and avoid any risk of failure or success.

5. We avoid any situation where others might judge us.

Don’t go for a job interview and you avoid being turned down. Drop out of school and you do not have to take tests. Avoid being around others and they will never judge you.

This strategy will help you avoid failure. It will also keep you unemployed, under-educated, and living off the system, in poverty, for the rest of your life. You will have avoided being judged but at what price?

6. We become perfectionists and set impossible goals to avert failure.

This may well be the sneakiest way of all to avoid failure. Set impossibly high goals. Always do too much work constantly and then when one of your many tasks does not turn out up to the standard you have a ready-made excuse. Who could blame you for failing at a few things what with all the things you have to do?

More tomorrow on those perfectionists and how they avoid both success and failure.

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

6 Reasons You Procrastinate

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Success or failure sign

Success or failure.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Why do you procrastinate?

Anyone can procrastinate some of the time. Some of us seem to be plagued by more procrastination than others. Procrastination can result in all manner of life problems, from conflicts with spouses to job failure or loss. With so many negative consequences of procrastination, why do so many of us procrastinate and why do some of us procrastinate so much?

Six factors appear to be major contributors to procrastination. No one factor seems to be solely responsible and you may experience one or more of these causes. There are listed in roughly their order of importance based on some rather old research studies but most of us can and do procrastinate for several of the reasons on this list.

1. Fear of Failure fuels procrastination.

As we talk about the fear of failure it is easy to see why being afraid you might fail at something would cause you to avoid doing it. Who wants to have to do something that has a high chance of failure?

Fear of failure is a major reason for procrastinating but it is not the only reason.

2. Lack of energy increases procrastination.

Not having the energy results in putting off things we know we should do but just can’t seem to get to. This is the consequence of over scheduling, having just too much to do. Most of us are guilty of trying to do too much in life.

If you can’t say no and you keep taking on projects for others or at their insistence, you can run out of time and energy. Sometimes you just need to rest and that old buddy of yours, procrastination can help by making time for you to rest by putting off things you say you “should be doing” but the reason for doing this is to please others not yourself.

Depression or other physical and mental health issues can also leave you with too few resources to take on that one more task.

3. Task aversion causes procrastination.

It makes sense that we put off things we do not want to do and we do the things we enjoy or at least the things we find less onerous. Not liking something results in it having a low personal priority.

Ever notice you tend to put off the things others want you to do but find the time to do the things that you most enjoy. Most of us do that. Despite the negative consequences, we may experience for failing to do what others, our boss or partner, want us to do. Most of us will do other things first and put off that requested project.

4. Dependency or conformity justify procrastination.

If you find that other’s requests move to first place, and you are procrastinating about doing things you want to do for yourself, you need to look at your goals and priorities. What are you getting out of sacrificing yourself for others?

Do you fear being different? Conformists avoid criticism. They also do not get noticed. Putting off things that might result in accomplishments may be the result of fear of success making you different from others.

5. Extraversion encourages you to procrastinate.

Extroverts may be procrastinators? Who would have guessed this?

Extroverts like doing things with people and they may go for the fun thing like being around others, attending a party or engaging in social activities, rather than study or do something boring over the weekend.

Extroverts sometimes will put things off because they like to take risks. It is more of a challenge to do the paper the night before it is due. Putting things off adds to that element of risk, that gambler’s instinct, and makes life more exciting.

 6. Rebelliousness expresses its self through procrastination.

Who picked this project anyway?

If you need to do something because someone else said so, one way your brain may protect you from domination by others is to forget to do what you were instructed to do.

So why do you procrastinate? Do you do it for one of these reasons, or do you have your own personal reason for putting things off? Research says that you probably procrastinate some of the time. We all seem to do it at least occasionally. If you are a procrastinator like the rest of us, you probably do it for several of these reasons and some others as well.

Related article

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Fear of Failure Prevents Success.

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Success or failure sign

Success or failure.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Fear of failure can paralyze you.

From an early age, humans learn to be afraid of failing. Fear of failing and its cousin fear of being evaluated by others has a survival value some of the time. People who are slow to jump in a flooding river or refrain from walking into a tiger’s cave may live longer. But in modern society, this tendency to avoid things we may fail at keeps us from trying things that could make us successful.

Fear of failure has been linked to Eating Disorders, Anxiety, Worry, and Depression. The fear of failing also causes some people to become antisocial, cheat, or use force. If success is so very important and failure is so unacceptable what might you be willing to do to avoid that failure and guarantee success?

Why does this Fear of Failure mechanism keep you from success?

Fear of failure triggers an automatic avoidance response. Avoid the problem you feel no pain. You also achieve no gain.

Fear of failure in this modern urban setting is more about avoiding shame than avoiding Tigers or falling off mountains. There is a strong connection for many among us between failing and feeling that we are failures. Fear of failure moves beyond being protective when you come to believe that if you try something and can’t accomplish it you are a failure as a person.

In this highly competitive world, some come to think that if you can’t be first place, world champion, then it is better to not try and set yourself up for failure and the accompanying shame. This fear of failure and the avoidance of effort cause you to avoid the activity and assure that you will forgo any possible successes.

Fear of failure affects us in three primary ways.

Fear of failure creates performance Anxiety.

Excessive fear of failure results in constant performance anxiety. By performance anxiety, I am not talking about activities in the bedroom, though that can happen also. Fear of failure prevents people from doing things that might be noticed at work, in school, on the playground, and in life.

The strongest fear known, worse than the fear of death, is public speaking. Most people would rather risk the tiger, swim the raging river than get up in front of an audience and talk about something.

Performance anxiety also affects athletes. Playing it safe does not win games or competitions. To win big you need to take big risks.  Coaches know you need the skills but you also need the heart to take those big risks and make those big plays.

Fear of failure magnify’s Social Anxiety

Fear of failure causes people to avoid social situations. Avoid the situation and the anxiety is reduced. Do this repeatedly and you become afraid to be around people. Avoidance behavior is self-reinforcing. At some point, you will become lonely and isolated. At this stage it is extremely difficult to engage in social activities and when you do you are likely to avoid anything that might be evaluated or bring you notice.

People with social anxiety become lonely even when in a crowd.

School Anxiety can be the result of fear of failure.

Think this is confined only to small children? Think again. Adults who attend a training will attempt to avoid answering questions, getting up in front of the group to talk, or any other activity that might result in their being evaluated.

People high in fear of failure find that their anxiety also interferes with their work life. It becomes fear of the workplace. Similar forms of fear of failure can interfere with many other roles in life and keep us from taking on an activity that might result in a possibility of success or failure. People who are high in Fear of Failure overvalue the cost of failure and underestimate the gains they might achieve from success.

There may be times when a dose of fear of failure is protective and keeps you from attempting things that could be harmful. Beginning swimmers should not attempt to swim the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the time the problem with our fear of failure is in the opposite direction. We have the volumes on our fear meter set way too high.

Is the knob on your fear of failure control turned up to the max?

In future posts, we will look at Fear of failure, what causes it, how it is holding us back, and how we could overcome those fears. Since the opinions and evaluations of others play such a large role in our fear of failure we need to look at the ways in which we are handling the evaluations of others.

We also need to look at the tricks we play on ourselves to avoid failing or thinking of ourselves as failures and how those tricks are holding us back.

We should look at how we evaluated ourselves and how we react when we are evaluated by others.  A classic example of this other evaluation and fear of failure is test anxiety. We will use test anxiety to examine how our fear of being evaluated by others is holding us back and how we might overcome that fear.

Here is wishing you a safe journey on your road to a happy life.

Related articles.
Fear of Failure Prevents Success (counselorssoapbox.com)
To succeed follow your interests, to fail do nothing (counselorssoapbox.com)

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

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Mistakes are Required, Being a Failure is Optional

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4

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Success or failure sign

Success or failure.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

You are required to make mistakes.

Are you one of those people who are mistake aversive? You would do anything to avoid making a mistake?

hen you make a mistake do you feel awful and tell yourself you “shouldn’t” have done that?

When you make a mistake do you feel wrong, awful, even sinful?

Stop abusing yourself!

You need to make mistakes. The requirement to make mistakes is in your DNA. There are at least two reasons why mistakes are a human requirement.

1. You learn better from painful mistakes than from pleasant successes

Frankly, most of us do not learn from our accomplishments. We learn best from our failures. Here is an example.

Let’s say you like ice cream Sundays. Every week this year you stop after dinner at a favorite ice cream place and treat yourself to a Sunday. Then at the end of the year, you tell me about this tradition you have established. Quick, which one was the best? The worst? Was the one on the third week in February better or worse than the one you ate the second week in August?

Most likely you can’t remember. Pleasure and successes that are mostly pleasurable, are not stored in our brains in a whole lot of detail, it takes time for pleasure to “soak into” the brain. One article I read reported that it takes 30 seconds to a minute of concerted effort, thinking about that pleasant event to store the memory away in your brain.

Pain is easily stored in the brain.

Now if you drive a particular stretch of road home every day and one day you are in a terrible car wreck, you see someone killed, will you remember that? Sure you will. That painful event and mistakes are often painful, are stored deeply in our brains. Thoughts, even thoughts about things that have not happened, are events. Even if these thoughts only happen in our heads, those negative thought-events cause a lot of pain.

As a result of this experience, you may change your route, avoid that road altogether, or change your driving practices. You will have learned something about the dangers of driving. Remembering this event, dreaming about it, and talking about it may increase that storage of memory. You may even over store the event and become afraid to ride in a car.

The principle here is that we learn far more from our mistakes than from our success. If you want to learn, become knowledgeable, or even wise, you will have to make mistakes.

2. Mistakes are a source of creativity.

Most creativity comes from people doing things in new ways. They violate tradition. They do something in a manner other than the “correct” way to do things. Let me illustrate.

Say we work in the same place. Every day we pass in the hall. I say good morning, you say good morning and we go on our ways. Life is good, Life is predictable.

One day I say good morning, you say “How are you doing?”

This is terrible, the world is in chaos. You are not supposed to say “How are you doing?” This is a mistake!

Doing something new, that mistake in the pattern of following tradition results in creativity. Now that you have altered the universe by making this mistake, we just may need to stop and have a conversation. Our relationships have been altered.

Getting out of the routine, trying out new ways of doing and behaving is creativity. Sometimes these efforts work and sometimes they do not. It is our willingness to take a chance, risk making a mistake, that results in us trying new things and being creative.

In the title of this post, I used the term “being a failure.” There is a vast difference between failing at something and being a failure. Making a mistake and being a mistake is not the same thing.

Everyone who tries makes mistakes. The only way to avoid mistakes is to never attempt anything and that would be a mistake.

Every player in major league baseball has struck out. Every NBA player has missed a shot. This failure or mistake has not made them any less.

Make all the mistakes you can. Fail early and often. Just please, learn from these experiences, do not keep repeating the same mistakes. Make new ones. That way you will keep trying and some of the things you do will work.

You may make some mistakes and fail sometimes, but if you keep trying you will never be a failure.

Sometimes we become so afraid of failure that our fear prevents us from being successful. Coming up soon a post on how that fear of failure may be preventing your successes.

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Finding Success and Avoiding Failure

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6

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Success or failure sign

Success or failure.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Is your life a success or a failure?

Why is success so elusive and failure so common? Success should be easy, pick a destination aim for it, go as hard as you can and you should get there. Right? It is not that easy.

No one has ever come for therapy telling me they are too successful. Lots of people tell me they feel their life is a failure. Apparently finding successes is a whole lot more difficult than just pointing your life in a direction and staying on track.

Success is about reaching your goal.

Success is also about the way you take the trip of life. Navigating life reminds me of taking a drive on an unfamiliar windy mountain road in a driving rain. You can’t see very far ahead and the road keeps changing direction. Add a little fog in for good measure. In the early morning before my first coffee, my brain is a lot foggy. Some years are like that also, can’t see where I am going, just need to keep moving forward.

So you are driving along this road of life and you can’t see the road very clearly, lots of twists and turns. You think this destination called success is up ahead but since you haven’t been there yet how will you know it when you see it and how do you get there?

It helps to have a good roadmap. We talked about that before in posts on goals and values. If you do not know where you are going then how can you know when you get there? When we are young we don’t usually know what we want or even what is possible. The danger here is that we will adopt someone else’s goal.

Even when you have a really good roadmap for the journey of life it may not work well. There are road closures, construction zones, and new thoroughfares that open up. Your map may need revision. Turnoffs may appear that were not on your original life map.

One goal could be to fill that car of life up with things. So every time we see something along the road of life we stop and grab some. Pretty soon the car is getting full of all those things. So full there is no room for anyone else in the car, so from here on we go it alone.

If success for you means things not people, life can get lonely.

Got to get to the place called success and other people are in our way. So we fill the car up more. Are there any things others have that you need to feel successful? Sometimes the car gets so full of things we can’t steer anymore and we get in accidents. We have to toss some things. Or the car of life gets so full of things it won’t go anymore.

In life, we call this sort of occurrence a bankruptcy. The bills we have to pay for the things we have gotten exceed our ability to keep moving forward and we have to give up. This bankruptcy can be an actual financial one or it can be an emotional one. Sometimes we do everything right, keep to a minimum of things and still, the car of life hits a slippery part, illness, divorce, or job loss, and we slide into the ditch.

Sometimes the trip of life gets difficult, it is all uphill and that car of ours just can’t seem to make the grade. We are tempted to turn off and take an easier road. That easy road may be things like drugs or alcohol or some other addiction. It could be all sorts of other bad habits.

That easier road, many times it is easy because it is all downhill. You don’t realize how far downhill you can go until you reach the bottom. If you thought the road of life was difficult before, climbing back up after a ride to the bottom is even more difficult.

Recovery is possible.

No matter how far down you go you can climb back up. What people who take that route find is that they don’t need all that stuff and that they don’t need to rush so fast to get to success. Just climbing back from their bottom is a success for them.

Some people on this journey of life get discouraged. They pull over and stop trying. Once you give up on success it is all about how much suffering you can endure and then you die.

If you set things out too long then it can be hard to resume your trip. But many of these people who became discouraged decide to start the trip again and they can and do get back on track.

We are learning that there is never a point in life when you are too old to have a happy life. What you need to do is figure out just where it is that you are going and then determine to enjoy the ride. Not every car ride has a destination; some are just for the pure pleasure of the experience.

People who have become discouraged and stopped trying, when they pick up and begin to participate in life, discover that the pain of life is required. Sometimes life is hard. But the suffering, the “I can’t take this”, is about attitude. Being miserable on your journey is an option and so it appears is happiness.

So along this journey, I am calling writing my blog, I want to take some time to look at success and failure and see what they look like and how we determine which is which. As time and space permit we will look more at life and how it is we can cope with success and failure and create the happy life we all deserve.

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

To succeed follow your interests, to fail do nothing.

Posted on by
2

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Success or failure sign

Success or failure.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Interest drives Self-confidence and results in success.

If you want to be highly successful, pick things to do that you are genuinely interested in and your chances of success greatly increase. When you care enough the doubts fade.

A mother may be confident when caring for her children even when she has low self-confidence when it comes to speaking in front of a group. She is highly interested in being a good parent and the result of that interest in her children is that she takes chances, does things to benefit those children even when she is not sure if she is doing those things correctly.

When we know about something we are better at seeing or hearing it. We call this the expert effect. When we are interested in things we focus on that interest, not our own insecurity. So to increase your self-confidence, increase your knowledge about as many things as you can.

Find an area where you know a lot about it and develop your self-confidence in that area first. If you have a hobby you will feel more confident both when talking about that hobby and when engaging in it.

Knowledge about any subject creates an increase in self-confidence. If you have taken a class in a subject you will find that having that knowledge base will increase your confidence when the topic comes up. You become the expert in that area and others will look to you for the answers. Being sought out for your opinion is a huge confidence builder.

Being fully interested in something encourages you to take action; you do it because you want to, not for other’s approval. What we find is that the more things you do and the less you are concerned about other’s opinions of you, the more likely you are to have some successes.

One way to build the belief that you can do what you try, we call this self-efficacy, is to tackle small things and be successful at them. As you come to believe that you can accomplish that thing you will be able to expand the things you attempt.

If you want your children to become more self-confident and self-reliant, focus on the things they can do, let them get good in those areas and then they will have the confidence, the belief in themselves, to venture out and attempt other things. Use this same method on yourself to develop that “can do” attitude.

This should not mean that as you become more knowledgeable about a topic you become unwilling to listen to other’s opinions. The more you know, the more expert you become in an area, the more you will be able and willing to listen to other’s opinions without feeling that your own opinion is in jeopardy.

Doing nothing builds failure. The less you do the less you will feel competent to do. Mental and emotional abilities like physical ones need exercise to grow and develop. Say you can’t and you will make it come true.

What areas of your life are so interesting in that you can become confident in your abilities? How will you allow your interest to grow your self-esteem?

Beginning later this month we will talk about self-esteem, success and failure, and how evaluation, our own and those evaluations of others, can further our success or result in failure. We will also talk about why some people can take on any test with confidence and others have so much test anxiety, fear of failure, that every test, every challenge in life is hard for them. Stay tuned for more on the path to your success and happiness.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel