Imagine a battle where you're the attacking force and you use a simple tactic to win. You pin the enemy with frontal fires, then you send your troops around the side to flank them and take them out.
What do you expect will happen the next time you face off that enemy? You expect they'll be ready for that, so it shouldn't work again.
Sure, if this battle is in a video game against a computer opponent, that tactic might well work again. Why? Because the game software isn't made to learn from past mistakes and adjust what it does. It just follows its programmed logic.
Well, history shows sometimes even in real military campaigns against real human opponents, you can re-use the same tactics and get the same success again. And again. And again. Why? Because some human organizations and structures just don't learn. Individuals do, but the organization as a whole is incapable of learning in a relevant timeframe.
This happened in the early 1800s when the Chinese Qing imperial army kept losing to a small British force that employed that simple tactic again and again. Pin them with frontal fire, send your attackers to flank. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Could this seeming inability to learn happen at an individual level?
Sure it does. Just in different contexts.
One month into each new year, 7 out of 8 people who made New Year's Resolutions have already failed and given up on them. That's an 88% failure rate within just one month. Why?
Using positive affirmations, telling yourself "empowering" and positive statements about yourself, generates mixed results. For people who are simply telling themselves what is already the verifiably true, it rejuvenates their confidence and motivation. For people who are telling themselves what they want to be but are not verifiably yet, it gives a short-term boost to confidence and motivation but ultimately erodes both along with self-trust. Why?
Many people keep making the same mistake again and again when they frame their resolutions each year in the same way, or they keep using positive affirmations. All because they learned somewhere along the way that's how people who are serious about improving themselves, their performance, and their results do.
Unfortunately, most new year's resolutions and positive affirmations meant to "empower" operate at the wrong level. Earnestness and persistence will not generate the results you want if you're going about things the wrong way.
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