UNDERACHIVEMENT AND FAILURE

In a previous post I mentioned a book "Your Own Worst Enemy" by Dr Ken Christian. You may want to look carefully at his website. One of the things he lists in his book are the indicators that you are an adult underachiever, a person with high potential but high potential derailed by behaviors that defeat near successes. If you take this "Test" and score more than half of these with a yes, you need help.

If you know and love someone who is habitually self defeating in these areas you should help them find the way. I speak from personal experience. I won't mention his name but in the last 2 years this man has gone from bad personal relationships in his family, at odds with his son, business failure, debt, tax problems and generally feeling like a fraud to becoming a confident and capable success. He is about to turn 60. It's not too late to change. He has used this book to identify the behaviors that were keeping him from becoming what he wanted to become. Watching him blossom has been a joy.

When Dr. Christian wrote this book and created this program he developed it for teenagers. What he discovered among baby boomers and even younger people are millions of people stuck in underachievement and failure because they have bad habits never broken. I still think young people should be the focus of this effort. But as my friend Jim proves it's never too late.

Many of the older people will go to their grave with unrealized potential, even if they are very able. High potential failures.

Take the test. Have you developed the habit of being an adult underachiever?

1. Taking shortcuts and doing the minimum possible even with important matters.
2. Spending more time getting ready to work, getting out of work, or getting others to do it, than working.
3. Inconsistent, insufficient effort.
4. A lack of real engagement even in your most important life activities and relationships.
5. Ambivalence in making decisions.
6. Planning, scheming, and talking about things but not following through on them.
7. Difficulties organizing work and organizing your life in general.
8. Difficulties reaching distant goals due to a lack of appropriate planning and persistence.
9. Repeated initial excitement for new ventures, followed by disappointment when the new wears off.
10. False starts and frequent changes in direction and goals due to boredom, and a preference to start something new.
11. Failure to complete important projects, whether pleasant or unpleasant.
12. A tendency to quit things just as you begin to achieve success doing them.
13. Procrastination.
14. A history of being involved with relationships, jobs, or other situations that demand less than your true capabilities and therefore provide less than full satisfaction.
15. Gravitating toward non-traditional occupations in order to avoid traditional structured work schedules or the demands of bosses or supervisors.
16. A history of being stuck in situations that you thought would be temporary.
17. Self-doubt and low or varying self-esteem.
18. Fears that you will not be able to live up to your own expectations or those of others.
19. Recurrent fears of that you are faking it or are a fraud and about to be found out.
20. A paralyzing fear of striving for what you really want because you do not want to be disappointed or fail.
21. Unrealistic notions of what is actually required for success.
22. A history of keeping your options open by postponing serious commitments.
23. Difficulties in appropriately balancing risks and opportunities with an habitual tendency to take unnecessary risks, or to play it too safe, or to alternate between the two strategies.
24. Blaming failures on "bad luck" or other people instead of accepting personal responsibility for them.
25. A feeling that you are socially inadequate and younger than your age and that you have fallen behind your peers in reaching important milestones.
26. A feeling that time is running out and you haven't gotten started.
27. Periods of depression.

Dr. Christian says:
The list is a summary of the characteristics of high-potential people with whom I have worked who fell into habitual patterns that blocked the kind of success they wanted. Your answers can alert you to ways you have limited your possibilities and provide information from which to begin to change your course.

The greater the number of statements to which you said "yes," the more likely it is that you have adopted at least some similar patterns. It is not only by answering the questions above, however, but also in your heart that you know to what degree you may have thus far cheated yourself of a fuller sense of self-realization.

Gene Says:
The underachievers will read this, intend to do something about it and then lose attention, derailed by other things and never follow thru. How many adult underachievers does it take to change a lightbulb? "Wait, I need to run to the store to get a bulb. Maybe I can pick up an oil filter for my car while I'm there. Let's go to a movie while we're out. Look there's a seagull. Hmmm, Why is is dark in here? Oh yea I need to get a lightbulb......."