{UAH} What is wrong with me? Why can’t I be successful? And don’t tell me success is relative or subjective. There’s a bigger force that doesn’t want me to prosper. No matter how much I fight it, I seem not able to win. Failure is all I have and know.

Dear EM

Three hard facts to swallow:

There is no force in the universe that does not want you to be successful. This is an irrational thought. We tend to personally believe all the thoughts we have are rational, even the irrational ones. When this happens we create stories and narratives to justify the thought. Your narrative is that there must be some sort of force preventing you from becoming successful. You need to let this go, or the belief itself will become a limiting factor in any other thing that you do. You will believe that you will be stopped before you have started.

In general watch out for your beliefs, positive and negative. Beliefs are just beliefs, subjective fictions. They only have merit when backed up with evidence and a theory. You need the theory to make sure you do not make spurious corrolations like the one in your question. It does not follow that your failures are due to an unknown force.

The principle component of success is failure. This means that to create anything of complexity beyond menial tasks that anyone can do, like making a cup of coffee, requires a series of activities that necessarily involve continued failure until the right way is found. Many smart people understand this well.

"Success is comprised of 99% failure", Henry T Ford

The Team that created the brilliant lubricant and cleaning chemical WD40 had 39 failures before they came up with the winning formula. Using rough statistics you need to fail somewhere between 39 to 99 times ahead of success. If you are 'unlucky' and fail at the level of an outlier you may have to fail 200 times before succeeding. If the thing you are trying to achieve is reasonably achievable you probably havent failed enough yet. If you have failed alot, congratulations you are already closer to success then all those that gave up before you. You are always moving closer to success at every point of failure. It's in the math.

There is nothing wrong with you because we are all basically exactly the same. Unless you have a physical or mental handicap in some way. Significant reasearch has been undertaken in this area. I would recomend reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. He makes a compelling argument that most components of success overwhelmingly come down to external not internal factors. You have the same basic biological hardware as anyone else. Dont believe there is something wrong with you. That will become yet another limiting factor that your created yourself.

These three points will hopefully steer your thinking into a more productive viewpoint.

You are probably doing the wrong things. If your goal involves doing a lot of things you hate to to get to an uncertain objective you like then you have a formula for failure. If you align your objectives to activities you enjoy along the way you succeed every single day of the journey. Even if the objective is not reached you would have a great time in the process. You win even when you lose. Think hard on this. Life is a series of present moments, work hard to make each moment one you enjoy. Thats worth more then a pot of gold will ever be, and leads to zero regrests on your death bed.

Many people thought they wanted a pot of gold until they got it. It takes most people many years to achieve this before they realised it was never important to begin with.

Based on the character of your question I would offer up these points too:

• Take responsibility for everything in your life. Do not blame other people 'they' or external factors (invisible forces) for your perceived failures. When you take responsibility you empower yourself to change things. Take responsibility for everything, even distant things like world poverty. You will end up making choices that help solve the problem.
• Everytime you see lack in your life think of as many things you do have as you can. Break your limiting beliefs. You may have health, or a home, someone you love, or maybe just a cup of coffee. Plenty of people do not have these things. Try gratitude out, it will get you into a more productive mentality.
• Be mindful of your thoughts, do not accept wallowing in self pity. When you think these thoughts you invite an associated emotional state which leads to more negetive thoughts and self perpetuates. Learn to meditate to control the flow your thoughts. Take responsibility for your thoughts, dont believe that they are outside of your control.

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