There are three words you can use that guarantee failure in just about any endeavor, including both business and personal life.
My friend Gary Barnes (who happens to be one of America’s leading business coaches) does an exercise in his boot camps. He asks everyone in the audience to put their pen on the table, and then instructs them to try to pick it up. Most people figure out after 2-3 times how to follow the instructions correctly—“Trying” to pick up the pen is not the same as actually picking it up!
Darren Brown, the English stage hypnotist and magician, mystifies audiences using the same words. He explained in a rare behind-the-scenes documentary interview that when he gets people in a hypnotic state and tells them, “Try to stand up,” or “Try to lift your hand,” or, “Try to remember your name,” they cannot stand or move their hand or say their name. The reason is that the subconscious mind knows that the word, “Try,” is a command to fail. This seems amazing to the audience looking on, because they generally do not make that connection.
The words, “I will try,” sound very positive, but in fact are a code for, “I am not committed to seeing this happen.” If I ask a client to send over the headshots for their new website and they say “I will try,” I know that it will never really happen. Remember when Luke Skywalker’s spaceship was stuck in the swamp? Luke thought it would be too hard, so when Yoda told him to get it out of the swamp, he said “I will try.” In the immortal words of Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Gary Barnes has created a new icon:
I have almost no sense of balance and even less grace on my feet. (If you see me on the ski slopes, get far, far out of the way!) When I was a freshman in college, I took an ice skating class. I was determined that I was going to learn to skate, or else break some bones in the attempt. At the end of the course my teacher told me, “Steve, I’ve been teaching ice skating for 18 years, and I have never had another student who fell down as much as you.” But despite all the falls during the learning process, I was skating, and enjoying it immensely!
To your success!
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