Carrie Green: Programming Your Mind for Success

Carrie Green: Programming Your Mind for Success

Larson's Cultural Myth: Possibility of Success implies that if you work hard enough and are honest you can and will be successful. This particular speech focuses on being honest with yourself.

I think all of us go through life and feel at times that we don’t measure up. Maybe it’s our job, or perhaps our wayward children? Maybe we want to lose weight or just have confidence in presenting a memorized speech in our Communications class. Whatever it is, isn’t there a way to just get over it? Can’t we just work hard enough and smart enough to be successful and reach our goals? According to Larson’s Possibility of Success, definitely. Who doesn’t want success? There are so many books, tapes, shows, programs and retreats out there telling us that if we just do what they tell us to do, we will be successful. The question is, are we all successful even if we work our guts out trying to accomplish something that we really want? I found this speech by Carrie Green on YouTube that talks of her success, struggle and redirect toward greater success.

Green talks of her successful completion of her law degree coupled with the successful launch of her global online mobile phone unlocking business. Success, right? Wrong. After all was said and done she decided that she was unhappy and miserable with what she had decided to do with her life and wanted to make some changes. She speaks of traveling abroad to find herself, reading books and searching everywhere for the answer to her problem. As she tells her story of success and failure and rebounding and rediscovery it causes an affective consequence within the listener. At least it did for me. I believe that every one of us feels inadequate at some point in our lives. Some more often than others. Her story of redefining her goals and her desires in her life and conquering her negative thoughts and behaviors to go onto a successful and productive life are motivating and inspiring to anyone trying to do the same. She says, “Yes, I wanted to be successful. Doesn’t every single person in this room want to be successful?”

As Green tells of her struggles, she defines the process premise of need very well. She says that she had the need to change what she was doing. She was isolated and lonely. She says she finally “crumbled and started to question everything and started to think questions like “what am I doing? What is the point of all this?” She had a need to get back to her “positive, optimistic and go get it person” that she used to be. She then goes onto suggest that Michael Gerber’s book The E-Myth had an answer for her. In essence, “what kind of things do you want people to be saying about you and the life you lived” at your funeral. She says that she finally realized that she “had to figure out what it was that I wanted to achieve, why I wanted to achieve it, why it actually meant something to me, I had to figure out the kind of person I needed to become in order to make it happen.”

Green also talks about the premise of her attitudes and of being self-defeating and negative toward everything. She would come up with ideas to change or improve her situation and immediately shoot them down as pointless and out of reach. She realized however that if she wanted to be successful and live an incredible life that she needed “to get my mind to be on the same wave length as me.”

Thirdly, Green talks about her emotions towards the realization that she was responsible for her choices and where they had led her to that point in her life where she was feeling unsuccessful. She was waking up daily and focusing on the negative instead of making necessary changes. It was consuming her thoughts, actions and emotions. In order to make positive changes Green says, “I had to program my mind to make it happen. I had to program my mind for success.”

As I was listening to this, I was trying to apply the things that were being said to my personal life. Carrie makes some good points about how if our mind is in the right place we can be more successful. If we can be consciously aware of all of the things we are thinking and when we catch ourselves being negative we can make a choice to steer our thoughts in a more positive direction. She says it’s possible to control our thoughts and not let them control us. If we can vividly picture our success, then we can accomplish it, “just like all the top athletes do.” She suggests that if we make a wish list of what we wanted, have a goal board and add to it, visualize what it would be like to have those things happen then it will be reality. Green states that she realized, “if I could get my mind to be certain that I could make something happen, that somehow I would figure out a way.” She also claims that, “success is no accident. Living an incredible life is no accident. You have to do it on purpose and it starts by knowing exactly what it is you want to achieve, knowing why you want to achieve it, knowing the kind of person you need to become in order to make it happen, and programming your mind to make it happen because you only have one life to achieve everything.” These things I think point towards being consistently striving to achieve and make change in an effort to be successful. This is the fourth process premise. 

No pressure at all. I feel that Carrie is very successful in outlining the process premises and makes her point quite succinctly. I feel though that for anyone seeking success, who has not experienced it, would not take what she says in the way it is intended. She speaks mostly of mind over matter, or mind over thoughts, attitudes, and emotions which for some is a lot easier said than done. Her entire speech is centered on the thought process and not the actions required, although she does say, “If I could get my mind to be certain that I could make something happen, that somehow I would figure out a way.” This does imply that there is a matter of work, and hard work, involved in making dreams a reality. This type of speech is great at motivating some, but can be un-motivational for others. Especially those that have tried so hard to accomplish something and have ended up failing.