Suppose you have made little progress in modifying your behavior
in spite of feedback and coaching—what can you do?
Suppose you struggle with balancing your personal and professional
life, often finding yourself overcommitted. You have a demanding job as well as
family, church, and community duties. You have difficulty saying “no”
and feel guilty that you are not doing enough for your children. You try to decrease
your work load but seem to be busier each year. What can you do?
There is a paradox of success, making it difficult for successful
people to grow and improve. When things are going well, people have little motivation
to change. Yet, successful people need to change before they have to change or
they will plateau or decline.
Four Key Beliefs
Successful people have four key beliefs that drive their success
and, often, limit their growth. These beliefs are:
I choose to succeed. Successful people believe that they are doing
what they choose to do, because they choose to do it. They have a strong need
for self-determination and do not like feeling controlled or manipulated. They
believe that their behavior is a result of their choices and commitments. The
more you believe that your behavior is a result of your own choices and commitments,
the less likely you are to want to change your behavior. Your personal commitments
can make it hard for you to change.
I can succeed. Successful people believe that they have the internal
capacity to make desirable things happen. They do not see themselves as victims
of fate; rather they believe that their motivation and ability has driven their
success. Successful people often confuse correlation with causality. Because they
get positive reinforcement for results, they may not have an accurate perception
of what behaviors drove those results.
I will succeed. A contagious sense of optimism is an important characteristic of successful people. They not only believe that they can achieve, they
believe that they will achieve. Because they are ambitious and goal-oriented,
they have difficulty saying “no” to desirable opportunities. Some
successful people drown in a sea of opportunity and burn out trying to complete
what they have promised. Successful people are busy and face the danger of overcommitment.
I have succeeded. Successful people tend to have a positive interpretation of their past performance. They consistently over-rate their performance relative
to their peers. When positive outcomes occur, they believe that their efforts
were instrumental to the success. They see their history of what they have done
as a validation of who they are. Successful people’s positive view of their
performance can make it difficult to hear negative feedback from others.
Successful people have difficulty in accepting input from others.
If the feedback does not agree with their perceptions of themselves, they tend
to deny the information for three reasons: 1) the input is from someone that they
see as inferior; 2) they view the input as incorrect, and the other person as
confused; 3) they agree there is truth in the feedback, but it can’t be
important since they are so successful.
This is why feedback is ineffective with successful people. As Denis
Diderot once said, “We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and
drink drop by drop the truth that is bitter to us.” PE
