Abandon All Hopes. Say Goodbye To Positivity.

Is positivity good or...bad?

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Michael Sappler from NothingToFind.com. I hope you enjoy it! Be sure to check out his unique perspectives at his blog!

In this article I will tell you something that is contrary to what many personal development and self-help experts say:  Positivity is actually a barrier to success.

“What?”  You may say.  “But positive thinking helped me in many ways!”

But listen up.  I’ll tell you a secret:

Positive thinking is just a cure for the symptom. The core reason for lack of success is identification with the results of your actions.

The typical story of people interested in personal development and positive thinking may look like this:

At some point in their lives these people discover that their negative self-image and self-talk is a huge waste of energy and a barrier to success in life.

So what do they do?

They try to change their way of thinking. Think positive. Get a positive self-image.

This may seem intelligent and logical at first. And it will also bring success!

Yes, you will succeed!  If you are persistent and flexible enough you will find success in most undertakings.

But when the time comes when you have formed a new positive self-image through success and experience it will actually limit your future success. It will become a barrier. Do you know why?

Because defining yourself is limiting yourself.

Here is what happens: After you have some success in your area of expertise and have formed a new self-image, you will subconsciously sabotage yourself by trying to keep your new self-image intact. I will give some examples for this later.

So what do you do?

Recognize that identifying with your results is one-dimensional thinking. The world is multidimensional. Everything is interconnected. There are too many factors, and the “I” that caused the results does not exist.

You already did the first step by letting go of your negative self-image and not identifying with negative results such as failure. You learned to become persistent and not to give up.

To become a true master the second step is also needed, which is not identifying with positive results! A true master does not hope to win. He does not think about his past successes or failures. A true master just takes action.

I once read that when Roman emperors came back from great military victories and marched through the city, watched by thousands of citizens and followed by the proud and tired army, while the population praised their greatness and holiness, somebody always walked behind the emperors and whispered continuously:

“This is just an illusion, You are an ordinary human being.”

I will give you two examples of my own personal experience here:

Personal example 1: Playing video games

Here is a short example to show that this principle even works for video games.

When I was younger I spent most of my time playing video games (Warcraft 3 on battle.net for insiders ) and I became quite good.  Everybody who plays this game online has their own stats page where wins and losses are recorded.  And what happened?

After getting good stats, like 20 wins and 0 losses, I stopped training for a few weeks in order to keep up my good stats. My new self-image of a “good player” also prevented me from making the right decisions in battle – I tried to play it safe so that I win.

This sabotaged my success once again – until I realized that I just have to train continously to keep getting better.

Personal example 2: Meeting women

Two years ago, when I was 19 years old, I had absolutely zero experience with women.  Up until that time, I never held a conversation with a woman that lasted more than 30 minutes. I thought that I might never get a girlfriend because I did not look good enough.

So in order to improve my dating life, I started going out and practiced becoming more open to meeting and talking to people – this included trying to get girls into my bed. In the last 2 years I have approached about 3000 women.

I learned not to identify with failure anymore.  If I crashed and burned I would just press on and not think about it anymore. (“crashed and burned” means the girl turns back to me or says things like “go away” or something).

Then after several months of going out I gradually became more successful with women and managed to build myself a glorious positive self-image.

However, immediately after feeling successful with women I experienced great failure. This cycle occurred every few weeks, sometimes even twice a week when I went out a lot. It was a period of constant up-and-downs, having the best night of my life and then not even being able to talk to women the next day.

After many months I realized that the cause was from identifying with positive results of my actions. I would come out of the club thinking “I” kissed two beautiful girls. This was the illusion.  One night would be a glorious success, and the next night nothing would work. I tried to maintain my newly found positive self-image. It was my personal house of cards. One blow and it is destroyed.

With the self-image of a guy who is “good with women” I played it safe and did not enjoy myself. Not enjoying yourself authentically means no success with women!

I used my old stories and jokes again(totally out of context – they worked last night!), but they would end up sounding awkward because I was trying to force success.

Clearly this did not work and I was thoroughly depressed.  I would become successful, forming a new self-image.  But then I would crash and my self-image would be destroyed.  And this would happen over and over again.

That is until I stopped identifying with the results of my actions.  In other words, I stopped mixing the “I” with the results. And then sex just happened naturally, like magic.  ;)   Things just happen now.

Conclusion

Identifying yourself with anything is limiting yourself. Just do whatever you do, and do it with your total being and with all your heart. Total abundance will follow. Your results will be limitless, just like you are.

There is no need to put in effort in changing your thought patterns. Embrace this moment totally and everything will become effortless!