The Hidden Step
www.necouncil.org/the
hidden
step
STEP ONE
ignite your inner fre
Exercise #6
Your success mechanism achieves goals
through an adjustment method. It moves
forward, makes mistakes, and keeps learn-
ing until it learns the most effective ap-
proach to achieving the goal. Essentially
your successful attempts are stored in your
memory so that you can duplicate them
and failed attempts are by design ignored.
A person learning to throw darts will miss
the board many more times than he will
hit it. Initially he will fail more often than
succeed. Now if mere repetition were the
answer to improved skill, his practices
should make him more expert at missing
since that is what he has practiced most.
Although his misses may outnumber his
hits ten to one, through practice his misses
gradually diminish and his hits become
more and more frequent. This is because
the computer in his brain (success mecha-
nism), remembers and reinforces each
successful attempt and forgets the misses.
It literally ignores the failure attempts to
prevent too much negative feedback and
absorbs the experience from each success-
ful attempt. Our success mechanism can
function just as easily as a failure mecha-
nism depending upon the information we
give it to process. The more you fail, the
larger the storehouse of experiences to
help you overcome future failures quickly.
As soon as the error has been recognized,
it is equally important that the error is con-
sciously forgotten, and the successes to be
remembered.
Too much negative feedback restrains this
mechanism. Dr. Maltz describes it as fol-
lows: “Cybernetics scientists have built
Tis exercise changed my life! I know it will impact
RECALL YOUR PAST SUCCESSES
This is the most important exercise.
Do not skip under any circumstance.