The Wrong Ways to Do Anything

I just recently posted here on my blog about The Right Way to Achieve Anything. (Go read it now and come back!)

In this blog though, I'm going to discuss some of the Wrong Ways to Do Anything.

Its useful to know the wrong way too, so that when you do it, you can catch it, flag it, and eliminate it. If you dont know that "its" wrong, you might keep on doing "it"...

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With that said, according to the same structure as the "right way", here are some of the wrong ways. Assume that the first word in each cycle is the "starting point", which is simply the origin of the steps that follow it. It is the originator of all that follow it.

1) Results -> Thoughts -> Feelings -> Actions -> Results (again)

I like to call this the common man's failure. This is what the largest percentage of the population does. These people allow the appearance of things to control their thoughts; hence Results being the starting point.

Bob is meeting new women, and one laughs at him. Bob sees his results as "she's laughing at me". This realization sparks his thoughts about "how" he messed up, and "what" he did wrong, etc. These thoughts are flaring up feelings inside himself, like low self-esteem, low confidence, fear, etc. Now that his thoughts and feelings are swarming around his "negative" results, action is next. He says something else, this time even more incapacitated than before, and makes a bigger fool of himself. Now he has even more reason to feel like an idiot, and so he does. The cycle continues.

Everyone executes this cycle in some way or another! The problem is, its a self-fulfilling prophecy. This means that any results you ever get WILL ALWAYS BE CORRECT. If the results were wrong, you wouldn't be using this method. Thus the endlessness of this cycle.

There is no doubt about it, this is the most common way we all fail at anything we do. If you can become ultra-aware of yourself doing this one, like a hawk, I guarantee that your expansion of awareness alone will bring you astounding results.

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2) Feelings -> Actions -> Results -> Thoughts -> Feelings (again)

This one is interesting, I like to call it your average "addiction". Your starting point is a feeling.

Lets take Bob again, he enjoys drinking alcohol. His "starting point" at a certain moment might be his feeling of wanting to drink a beer. Since a feeling is his starting point, if he just acts instead of critically thinking first, he'll go get a beer. His results are then having that beer, and drinking it. This in turn will affect his thinking, perhaps thinking "man, beer is awesome.", which then spark his feelings about how awesome the beer is, which may even make him get up to go get another. If left unaltered, this cycle can lead to horrible physical and emotional addictions.

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While I'm at it though, I'd like to mention a cycle that I've found to be an "alternative" to the main right-way I posted earlier on.

3) Actions -> Results -> Thoughts -> Feelings -> Actions (again)

I like to call this one the "accidental" discoverer. Actions come first, all else follows.

Take Jason for example. Jason has been taught to always go for it and get his hands into what he's doing. If given a choice of passively and actively learning, he will always choose active. One day, Jason is with a woman, and he does something in the spur of the moment. He notices his result is that the woman laughs and is intrigued. This next step can actually be either/or, he'll either think about it and internalize it, then feel about it; or he'll feel good about it, and then think about it later. Either path will bring him forward with new mental knowledge and gut understanding (feeling), and when presented with a new situation, his actions can replicate his success.

This is much better than the wrong-ways, but its not quite the best way. Here, you are normally working with surface-level resources, seemingly at-random results, and overall you're fumbling into success.

The way to ultimate success is to choose and decide consciously what you want, first. Everything else follows.