Once I had this bit of tendonitis in my wrist. It was something I had many times before.
And I knew if I went to the doctor, they would tell me the same thing.
Take some Advil, put some ice on it, and it if keeps hurting, we’ll inject you with cortisone.
Basically, since I knew the drill by heart, it was my “go-to” routine whenever it would flair up.
Only once a female friend talked me into going to the doctor.
Since this was the first time she saw me with this ailment, it was new.
And foolishly, I gave in. Went and waited an hour. Paid the co-payment (which at the time was $70.)
And was told the same thing. Advil, ice, cortisone if it doesn’t work.
She seemed happy. She said, “Well, at least you know!”
But I already knew.
She seemed to think the doctor would use some secret doctor magic to fix it, and when he didn’t she fell back on the “Well, at least you know!” answer.
This is what all of us do all the time. We have some goal or intention. We fail. Then we RE-FRAME our original intention, so we don’t feel like a failure.
We do this to protect our ego. If every time we didn’t get what we wanted, and we did feel like a failure, pretty soon we’d stop trying.
However, when we do something when we KNOW what’s going to happen, (like some doctor charging you $70 to tell you to take some Advil) it’s kind of foolish.
This is what they mean when they talk about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Humans are goal driven creatures. Every single day, we have hundreds, if not thousands, of small goals.
We set them, we take action, we achieve them. Sure, some of these are pretty simple, like eating and going to the toilet.
But often times they are of the “insanity” type. We keep trying the same thing, but it still doesn’t work.
Our brains are incredibly fast and powerful, which can sometimes be our achilles heal.
Meaning we’re doing the same things over and over, but we’re pretending we’re doing different things.
Maybe talking to different people and different locations, but we’re using the same strategies and operating from the same mindset of beliefs.
If you’ve got a horrible golf swing, buying new clubs won’t help. Or if you suck at playing the piano, buying a new keyboard won’t help. But that’s we do, while pretending we’re “doing something different.”
A fantastic way to beat this common mistake is to keep a journal. Write down your big life goals, and every day, write down what you did to get closer.
Then write down what happened.
Then write down what you could do tomorrow.
This way, you’ll elevate your natural goal setting and getting mechanism up to the conscious level.
And THAT’S when things start to click.
These can help:
