Common reasons for failure
Many of us very often lack the necessary frustration tolerance to achieve their goals. Frustration tolerance is the ability to do something now only to receive a reward later. The more vague and indefinite the reward might be, the greater this tolerance needs to be. We also need frustration tolerance to be able to better deal with defeats and our own shortcomings.
With young children, it is easy to test frustration tolerance. This test only makes sense without prior practice! Give your child something sweet to eat and tell him, “I’m going out now and if I come back in 2 minutes and you haven’t eaten it, you’ll get a second sweet with it.” If you come back and your little child has already been able to resist the urge to try it, then the chance for your child to master difficult tasks in life is very high.
It’s about reward procrastination, we might go to a party today or we might sit down in the evening to finish our project extra well. It’s about being able to wait calmly for the moment and being ready to practice something often enough!
If we want to achieve goals, we should like the associated tasks and hardships or deal with the frustration. For example, many self-employed people fail not because of their core work, but because they don’t like the bureaucracy (accounting). They find this area too annoying, which is another description for: “it frustrates me too much”.
| Frustration tolerance is extremely important and plays into many subsequent points again and again. It is a basic competence for success! |
Are you now of the opinion that if I improve my frustration tolerance, then I will definitely achieve my goals? Then this IF-THEN relationship isunfortunately wrong.
From an early age we are taught IF-THEN relationships. So parents are very fond of using this relationship to make something happen with us children. “If you sit quietly now, I will take you to the playground later.”
Just as our parents often failed to fulfil their IF-THEN links because it suddenly rained and yet there was no time to go to the playground, we now also use these links carelessly and even negligently by not doing something we have set out to do.
In doing so, the link suggests an important connection to our brain that can limit our volition (implementation of motivation). At some point, our brain no longer believes that we are really rewarding ourselves after an action.
More and more our mind automatically deletes our reward after most THENs and replaces it with: “Blah blah blah” or even worse: “It doesn’t matter what you do, nothing good will ever happen for you!” Accordingly, we don’t need to wonder why we don’t feel like taking action despite being highly motivated.
Even if our personal IF-THEN link is well established, we can fall into a dangerous logical trap.
Does my IF-THEN logic really fit? Does B really follow automatically IF I do A or is it different?
Many people come to my gym and say: “When I’m fitter again, then I can do more sport!” Isn’t it rather the other order that fits more often: “If I do more sport, then I’ll get fitter and fitter and then I can do even more sport.”
Many of us only want to change when they have achieved something. Only the sequence works exactly the other way round! Or have you ever heard of a world swimming champion who only started to take swimming lessons after winning the world championship?
So first we have to change the behavior in order to then be able to achieve (swim) the result.
What kind of lifestyle do world champions in swimming lead? They do commercials and are mega-famous, afford exclusive holidays and drive luxurious cars, don’t have to work, can go swimming from time to time. They simply enjoy a very relaxed life.
Bullshit!
Swimming is YOUR job, and usually no trade union pays attention to the respect of working hours or the right to a minimum holiday. Their working day starts right after they get up, often as early as 5am, and ends only when they go to sleep. Their job includes a good diet and conscious periods of rest, only it is not done according to their own wishes, but is firmly planned. If they want to remain world champions, they have to train for many hours and, above all, work on themselves to be able to push themselves harder and harder. It’s about constantly pushing the limits and paying attention to a lot of things besides swimming. Swimming is then only one part of the job: there is also optima
