“80+% of What I Try Will Fail”

At first glance that doesn’t seem like a very encouraging mantra to repeat to yourself, does it?

And the truth is, 80% is a generous number. It’s probably going to be higher than that. It will most definitely be higher if you don’t keep these mindsets here close to your heart.

Eben sees himself as an optimist in the long term. He believes that if he consistently keeps doing things that make him more valuable to his fellow man, building on what he’s learned from his mistakes, that more and more success will come to him.

But he sees himself as pessimist in the short term. He accepts the 80/20 universal law that dictates that most things, 9 out of 10, he tries out aren’t going to pan out the way he wanted them to.

He knows that if he keeps taking right action swings at the opportunity, the big money homeruns will accumulate based on what he continues to learn from the failures and carry him through all the strike outs. All the action he takes will allow him to crack the code on some crucial steps, systems, products, niches, and methodologies that prove to be profitable over the long haul that never would’ve been realized had he operated under the delusion that “If I do something it should work and if it doesn’t work I should quit because this business is bad, the economy is bad, the customers are bad, the money-grubbing corporations are bad, etc.”

Most people that make a living investing in the stock market are not winners. Of the people who are winners – the top 5-15% – they make all of their money on only a few of their trades. So out of a 100 trades they made for that year, the majority of their money will have come from 5-10 trades they made where they hit it out of the park. Most of their other trades will have lost them money .

Same thing holds true for poker – most of your winnings will have come from a few hands. Most of the hands you get will be crap. Most of the hands you play will actually lose you money.

This is the opposite of what your chimpanzee wiring wants you to do. We’re addicted to instant gratification because we live in an instant gratification driven society. When you smell pizza, you don’t go inside your mind and imagine how drained you’re going to feel 30-60 minutes from the time you shovel the pizza into your pie hole. Nope.

What you do is imagine thing you want RIGHT NOW and then you run towards it. Thinking long term is something we don’t come wired with and have to train ourselves to do with mantras like, “80% of what I try is going to fail”.

This mindset gives you permission to be the perfect non-perfectionist. It makes it okay for you to shut down a project that’s not working and move on to the next experiment.

And I thank you Nicole for reminding me of this and for sharing all the business owner mindset tips available in this hangout. 🙂

Thank you, Ute, for taking the time to listen to the recording and to post such a nice comment.

I’m glad that I got to introduce you to some of my friends – and inspire you to finish that post. 🙂

Big hugs,
N

I have to stop writing before this becomes an E-Book because it was the best panel discussion among our success leaders I have ever heard. I hope many will listen to it. Also, Nicole, this would be a great CD to listen to in the car or wherever.

Thank you for sharing this Hangout!

Ute