Conditioned Failure
By Moshe Katz
CEO
Israeli Krav International

May 4, 2017, Israel

No one promised you an easy life. No one promised that you would be married at 25, have 3 children and a dog, live in Pleasantville, USA and be a manager by the time you are 30.

We must cope with the reality of life to make it better. We must learn to succeed. Every day people fail at many things before they even start. In the classic comedy series Seinfeld, George always pretends to be an architect, but we never see him actually pursuing this dream. We only know that he wishes he were an architect and likes to present himself as one when he meets single women.

In many ways we are conditioned for failure, we train ourselves to fail. Failing is safe, there are no expectations if you expect to fail. "You see, I told you this would not work".

Life is about hard work and having the correct attitude. Lets' take a few examples;

A child goes to the park and falls down, or is bullied by others, or bitten by a dog. Next time his mom plans to take him to the park he suddenly "does not feel well" or his too tired. Why? Because now he is conditioning himself to fear the park, to expect that something bad will happen there.

When we expect bad things it is difficult to succeed.

Abraham Lincoln, Bruce Lee, the Beatles, all faced many failures before they tasted success, but millions of others do not have that resilient attitude.

Others fail once and make it a habit. You go to a bar, see a pretty girl, want to ask her out but....I am too short, too thin, too fat, not rich enough, not good looking enough, not stylish enough. While all this might be true it is not relevant. Your failure is due to your fear of success. We see another guy, no better looking than ourselves, no more successful financially, and he has the girl we wanted, and it makes us wonder, what makes him different?

With fear of rejection comes expectation of rejection. With expectation of rejection comes fear of trying anything new. With fear of trying anything new come the most clever excuses.

Now lets' take Krav Maga. Many of the greatest successes I have seen are men and women who had no confidence, no prior success and no great natural ability. Some were very thin, some were overweight, some were uncoordinated. But they had the courage to walk in the door of our humble school and believe in themselves and trust me. I said I would guide them and they accepted. They trusted me.

All too often in life we are products of our own fear. The late great Rabbi Noah Weinberg of Blessed memory, who guided IKI in its early years, said to me, "You want to talk to the person sitting next to you on the plane? So do so! What is the worst that can happen? he will say no."

We are afraid, I understand that. Fear is our worst enemy, well that and the bastard with a knife or a gun. When we fear failure, rejection, ridicule, we will come to expect failure. And we will make excuses for not trying. Excuses are not Reasons, there is a difference. An Excuse is not a valid reason for not doing something, it is a fear we need to overcome, if we wish to change our lives for the better.

My older brother Michael said to me something very wise before the recent US election, "It is very simple, either you are happy with the way things are now, or you are not. If you are happy, vote for the same party, if you are unhappy, make a change."

Are you happy with your life? Are you living to the fullest without fear? Do you have what you want out of life?

If not, now is the time to make a change. Just do it. (sue me Nike)