Accomplishing failure may be an easily learned behavior in many people, but if you are having difficulty, here are some pointers:

        An effective way to set yourself up for failure is to practice inferiority, worry and blaming and find ways to work these into your family, work and personal life. As you do this, you will foster some negativity in yourself and others. Some may try to tell you that you are making some mistakes in your attitude and actions but you must ignore this feedback if you are to succeed at failing. A good tip is to make those negative results seem like positive things. For example, if you blame and hurt someone, you may want to see that as a good thing, convincing yourself that blaming and hurting is the same as loving or caring. Also, make sure you keep telling yourself that people just don't understand you or know where you "are coming from."

        Next, it is important to disown your life struggles. Blame it all on the teacher, parent, co-worker or friend. (If you can't find a suitable target, use "society".) Disowning splits yourself from what you are disowning, like your troubles, deficits, and mistakes and it helps them to get more out of control. A bonus is that this will increase your sense of helplessness which is important in preventing you from making the needed choices not to fail.

        By now you will be ready to show your friends, or a counselor, or even society, just how poor, sorry and victimized you are. They may show concern and suggest things which could lead you away from failing, but you must resist! Be smart: Some suggestions may not work, so do those and fail so you can prove to them that you really are a sorry, helpless, victimized being.

        Next, and very important, you must complain a lot. This will put protection between you and the mean world. As you get better at complaining, you will become more clever in seeing other people's faults or in interpreting differences as problems. If you stop complaining, you might feel hurt, threatened, inferior or lonely so do not ever stop. It also helps to find other people with whom to complain so it will make you feel more right in complaining. Just be careful to not directly face or address the person or group you are complaining about or blaming because that may backfire: You may get valid feedback of a different perspective or learn more about what's really going on and that would put you right back to feeling hurt, threatened, inferior or embarrassed.

        If a counselor, friend, family member or anyone suggests a choice other than complaining or failing, pretend that he or she is kidding or out of line. Say that complaining and blaming is not the "real you". Ignore your choices and try even complaining about him or her and the lack of understanding of your position or inner self. By considering another's viewpoints, you might be alerted to some different ways of doing things and lead you away from being a dysfunctional, hurting person. If you tried to do something about your problems and it didn't work, be sure to try that same thing again, but try it harder. This will guarantee further failure!

        However, it is important to pretend, at some point, to get help or advice or other views, and then to put them down or dismiss them. This way you can strengthen your blame position and increase your fears and helplessness. Fear can block you from all the other good things in life. You must ignore the positive things you see... the love, the hope and beauty of the life and people around you. The outcome of what you are doing will feed on itself and become uncontrollable and you will happily find more to complain, worry and be fearful about.

        You will truly be a successful failure when you block out what the world events may have reflected throughout history: You can choose not to succeed and put a lot of effort into that choice or you can choose to succeed and also put a lot of effort into that. Either way needs effort, but the final outcome, and your life, boils down to choices. So go ahead and exercise the wonderful power of choice and do whatever it takes to accomplish what you really need, even if it is with a little help from your friends.

John S. Hilkevich, Ph.D.
Counserv@aol.com
 www.prayergear.com