The Achievement Habit Read Online Free

a few minutes. Then open them and move your attention around the room from one object to another. Each time you notice an object, say it has no meaning (as in, “The chair has no meaning”). Then think of people in your family and in your life and things you hold dear, such as your biggest accomplishments and most prized possessions. Name each, saying it has no meaning. When you are finished, sit quietly for a few minutes and then reflect on your experience.
    My colleague Sheri found it difficult to say that her daughter had no meaning. Of course her daughter has meaning, however, the meaning Sheri gives her daughter is not preordained. Some mothers abandon their daughters. Some mothers murder their daughters. Some disdain and deride them, and others cherishand support them. The variety of possible mother-daughter relationships and the meanings mothers attach to these relationships are endless.
    The point of the exercise is not to get the participants to change any of their relationships. Rather, it is to empower them with the realization that they have chosen the meanings they give to all of their relationships. As a result, participants often become more aware of how important a person or item is to them (as in the case of Sheri, who cherished her relationship with her daughter even more after this exercise), and they realize that they have the ability to change the meaning something has to them.
    For example, experiencing failure in an endeavor may initially be painful, but it is rarely catastrophic unless you give it that meaning. My colleague Georges was devastated when his son committed suicide after being jilted. The young lover took events that would probably be forgotten in short order and magnified them into literal life-and-death matters. It is easy to see the tragedy, both in the event itself and in the lack of perspective. Yet many of us lack this perspective, usually on a smaller scale, and it’s hard to step back and see this in ourselves.
    Once you understand that you can choose what meaning and importance to place on something, you can also understand that it is you, not external circumstances, who determines the quality of your life.
THERE IS NO PERMANENT RECORD
    As is likely true for most people, there have been many incidents in my life about which I can now laugh, even though they seemed terrible at the time. The earliest I can remember was the day I came home for lunch in tears from my fourth-gradeclass. I had been making noise in the stairwell and a teacher, hearing me, told me that the offense would go on my “permanent record card.” I was devastated, believing that this record would follow me forever. My mother attempted to soothe me, telling me it was nothing to be concerned about, but I couldn’t be convinced. Of course, years later I figured out that there was no such thing as a permanent record card. And the bigger question is, even if there had been, would it have really made a difference in my life?
    A similar incident happened in graduate school. I was much older and should have been much wiser—alas, I wasn’t. I was studying for my PhD and took an advanced course, “Mathematical Methods in Physics,” from a young Nobel Prize winner. The final examination relied heavily on some things well known to physics majors that I had not heard of and that had never been mentioned in the class. I got an F. When I talked to the professor about it, he told me, “Well, you are an engineer. If I took a music course, I would expect to fail too.”
    I didn’t cry to my mother, otherwise the situation played out almost exactly as my fourth-grade trauma had. I was miserable and went to see my thesis professor. He assured me that it was nothing to be concerned about. Still, it bothered me for a long time. Eventually, of course, I discovered that no one cared about the F grade on my transcript. Even if they did, would it really have made a meaningful difference in my life? Nope. I did take the next