Week 4 – Point of (No??) Return

​So, recently I was looking through some old files and ran across submissions from my first blog.  The Edge of fitting in is my first personal blog. This is from a blog that was a required component of a class I took a few years ago.  The Master Key Experience as defined by their website is “A Guided Journey of Self Discovery and Personal Achievement”. I can tell you it is just that.  26 weeks of looking in the mirror and learning who you are.  I learned some things that were holding me back.  There are exercises that to me, seemed corny and ineffective when I first learned about them.  It wasn’t until I learned why they work and actually practiced them that I understood and experienced the change in belief, and the change in me.  This post speaks to forming habits both good and bad.  
For your reference: 
MKE – Master Key Experience
Haanel – Charles F Haanel author of the Master Key System 
Og Mandino – author of The Greatest Salesman in the World.
What the bleep – movie - What the Bleep Do We Know 

As I am on a new branch of my continuing journey to becoming, I find that there are old habits that need to die and new ones I am breathing life into.  The following is from week 4 of MKE and I find myself once again, calling on the lesson learned in order to move forward.

​Week 4 of Master Key and Haanel is starting to make some sense to me (there’s hope!!) The past few years of my life I’ve experienced stagnation.  I set out to reach for a goal and I fall short, or the desire fizzles out, or I make an excuse, or the planets align in a way that keeps me from reaching my goal, or…or…or…you get the idea.

It’s frustrating to say the least. I never thought of myself as the person that left things undone… If I started, I finished.  I’d rack my brain always trying to figure out why I didn’t follow through, why I didn’t complete what I started, why I didn’t do what I knew I needed to do. I’d attempt a course correction and try again. I’d find myself looking for the exact event, that moment in time where I took a turn and became “that” person. Needless to say, … I still haven’t found that moment.

I realize that I may never find that precise moment. Thanks to Haanel’s quote below, Og Mandino’s Greatest Salesman Scroll # 1 and a clip from the documentary “What the bleep do we know” at least now I have a better understanding of if not “when”, or even “why” but “how” it happened!

During my Haanel readings this week, one line stands out for me.

Haanel 4:12 “…modern psychology tells us that when we start something and do not complete it, or make a resolution and do not keep it, we are forming the habit of failure – absolute, ignominious failure.”

“…forming the habit of failure…” doesn’t sound like anything I’d want to sign up for. Most of us don’t wake up and proclaim, “today I am going to form Failure Habit x!” Instead, you do a thing that doesn’t go so well and maybe someone shows you compassion, and that compassion feels good. Your cells are fed peptides with the chemical equivalent of compassion (What the bleep…) … the next time you do a thing again – you get compassion, and again – more compassion, and again – more compassion…and…one day you realize that you’ve been doing the “thing” subconsciously and feeding off the compassion…BOOM!  new habit formed.   Good, bad, or indifferent, Subconscious doesn’t care (the thing + the feeling + repetition = habit)

While this does not eliminate my stagnation, it does the following: it tells me that whatever the initial incomplete event or resolution, it held some significance for me, the reaction that followed internally or externally fed me something I was missing so I continued the behavior.

Luckily, I have not reached the point of no return. Mandino states in Scroll 1:

“For it is another of nature’s laws that only a habit can subdue another habit.” 
By starting with small tasks that are easily completed then moving on to bigger tasks and completing them, I can subdue the habit of failure.  I can find other more positive ways to feed my cells what they need.  I can create the habit of success.


(In the near future…)

Just the other day I heard a noise. I went to investigate and what I found behind the curtain made me grateful for the ability to learn and grow.  In the room are my old companions Stagnation and Failure whimpering in the corner.

​I walk across the room and open the exit door.  I point to it and show them the way.  I watch them walk out the door, but I don’t linger.  Instead, I close the door. I leave the room and allow the curtain to close behind me.  As I walk away, I smile and acknowledge I have returned, and I’ve got work to do.