Programming Ourselves to Fail
People often limit themselves by their own expectations. Certainly up to 10 or 15 years ago, in England the class system meant that large sections of the population were programmed to limit their expectations in life. If you came from a working class home, your lot in life was to get a menial job and look forward to holidays and retirement. A friend of mine from a very working class background bought his mother a present from Harrods (the upmarket London department store). She returned it as she said “People like us don’t shop at Harrods”. She limited herself by her preconceptions.
These preconceptions are so built into us that we are not aware of them. Although still present, the old class system is decaying in the UK. One of the reasons why Australians tend to be successful in the UK is that they are not limited by ideas about what their ‘class’ can do. Certainly in the past, a working class English person would have found it difficult to do business with someone from the British Aristocracy. Even if they could pluck up the chutzpah, as soon as they opened their mouth their working-class accent would give them away.
This is simply one example of how our inner would programs our outer world. People think that events happen
to them whereas to a certain extent they bring events on themselves. The outer world is a reflection of our inner world and people often bring about what they don’t want by concentrating on it. Sometimes, they actively encourage what they don’t want. When what they fear happens, it can be seen as a relief and as an endorsement of their own feelings. This is true in relationships. A wife who nags her husband can force her husband into failing and this, in turn, shows that she is right and her husband really is incompetent.
Here’s an example. A man invests a large sum of money in a risky venture and it fails. His wife regularly reminds him of how he lost this money. It becomes a weapon to her. Subsequently, he comes into some more money and is looking to invest it. He has a number of options. One is to ask his wife for advice, but after years of being told how useless he is in money matters he has a huge incentive to prove himself and if he can come up with a risky but profitable venture, he can make amends for the years of abuse. Of course he is going into a venture for the wrong reasons. Instead of researching the investment and looking at it objectively, he is concentrating of the scene where he has turned $20,000 into one million and is imagining the look on his wife’s face. On the other hand, the wife wants him to fail. She has been telling him he is useless with money for years and if he fails in his investment he will prove her correct. Even if he did ask her for advice, she would probably couch it such as way that she knows he will not take it.
The couple have programmed themselves to fail both financially and in their relationship.
