Fail Faster 2/20: "Think negatively"

Have you ever considered that the key to personal and professional success sometimes lies in?thinking negatively?

I know what you’re thinking: “But Gui, everyone told me to be positive, and if you think that you can move a mountain, you can.” To that, I respond: “Go ahead then, move the nearest mountain with sheer willpower.”

Willpower and positivity can only get you so far, the other 90% lies in making the right choices, consistently, over time. This article is about a powerful tool you can use called “inverse-thinking.”

Your brain is much better at finding problems than finding solutions. It’s much more effective for you to focus on the problem and what steps you can take for things to go wrong instead of the steps you should take for things to go right.

Let me tell you about my anxiety condition. I had to go through 1 year of therapy to help me cope with anxiety and panic attacks, but in reality, that year taught me how to use my brain’s dysfunctional chemistry to my advantage.

You see, I am a master at thinking about problems and creating imaginary scenarios where I fail spectacularly. Better yet, I am a master at visualizing every step my imaginary self took to get there.

I learned to use that to my advantage. By thinking really hard about how I could fail, I knew exactly what not to do. So, I just did the opposite.

There are a few things where you can look over your life and use this “inverse-thinking” tool.

Let’s say you wanted to be broke and unsuccessful, how would you do it?

The best people to explain this are the unsuccessful themselves which means that if you want to be broke you should definitely ask for their advice. Personally, if I wanted that, that’s what I would do.

These are the kind of people that once they fail, they quit immediately. These are the kind of people that repeat their mistakes and don’t learn from them. You should always go back to square one: that is a good way not to succeed!

There are thousands of ways to help you become unsuccessful. You can always start tomorrow, you can value the opinion of others over your own, and you can stop doing what gives you positive outcomes.

But if you want to succeed, just do the opposite of all that!

We are often told not to have a “dark side” or to suppress any bad emotions… but you can use your anger, your guilt, and your anxiety to your advantage. The bad feelings will always come, the question is: what are you going to do with them?