Why Winning Doesn’t Come Naturally For Most Of Us

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Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
which delivers cutting edge conversion strategies from the online trenches straight to
your earbuds. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
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once again it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

Igor: Welcome back to another edition of the List Building Lifestyle with your
host, Igor Kheifets. Back in the 1960’s of the time that was great for experiments
and all kinds of trials, there was an evil scientist, and I call him an evil
scientist, we’re going to call him Alfred just the sake of this episode, but the
reason I call him evil is because he was conducting shock experiments on dogs. So
the guy didn’t have a heart and of course I’m not going to jump into whole debate
about whether or not it was ethical for him to conduct shock experiments on dogs,
but I personally feel that he was an asshole for doing that. Nevertheless he made
his way into the annals history, if you will, by conducting a very important
experiment and learning about one particular trait, character trait, that has been
defining our life and maybe ways. So what he discovered is this, he started
ringing a bell and then conducting a light shock on his dogs any time he would
ring a bell. So what happened was that the dogs developed this reaction, this
response where now he could ring a bell and he didn’t have to shock the dog, but
the dogs would still show responses if they were just shocked with electricity. So
this is classical conditioning of course, and this is something that Pavlov
established a long time ago, only he found it more less sadistic of doing it, of
course with food. Bu Alfred, our hero did not stop here, what he’d done, he
proceeded to the next experiment and he put together wooden crate and he divided
it in the middle with a really just low wall. A wall that was low enough for a dog
to jump of. And he made sure that on one side of this crate, the floor was
electrified. Basically he would press a button and a light shock would go through
it, and on the other side there was no electricity, so he couldn’t hurt anyone
doing that. So he puts these dogs on the one side of the crate, where he can
electrify them, and he presses the button. What he expected to happen was he
expected the dogs to recognize they’re being shocked and jump over this tiny
little fence or whatever that was to the other side of the crate where there was
no shock, but the dogs showed the most incredible response. They simply lie down.
So what happened was, the dog learned, all dogs unanimously learned that they
could not resist or do anything about this electricity constantly shocking them
after the first experiment and they didn’t even try escaping it.

“Okay Igor, so I get it but I’m not a dog. I understand that if I’m being shocked
or electrified I should run the other way, and I know that I could jump over that
fence. It just seems stupid to even compare me to a dog.” Well in some way you’re
right, and in many ways many small things in life we learn to basically identify
danger and fight it or run away from it, but in many ways we are no different you
and I then these dogs in those experiments, because we attempt to do certain
things and we attempt to do them with our… Well we just give it our best. And
yet we fail anyway, and soon we learn to expect failures, so we become helpless.
But we weren’t born helpless, we weren’t born with the knowledge of us not being
able to do something, we learnt to be that way. And the concept that Alfred the
evil scientist actually introduced us to its called “learned helplessness”, you
should look it up because it is one of the reasons why people simply fail in this
business. They attempt to do something once, the attempt to write an email
perhaps, they attempt to set up their follow up sequence or they run a paid ad
campaign or whatever, and they fail once and then tried again, and then they fail
again. And soon they learn to be helpless whether they’re aware of it or not,
whether they choose to be that way, whether they choose to say, “Okay, you know
what? I’m not technical and this is really taking way more time than I was hoping
it would take. I really hope for this to become a part time business not a full
time job, so I’m not going to try and do that again any more.” Or because they’re
not, well just have to have this unconscious response to and not wanting to
experience the feeling of embarrassment and humiliation that you experience when
you fail to figure something out, when you fail to overcome a problem, so they
just stop trying altogether in the move to the next thing. That’s how the whole
shiny objects syndrome starts. You attempt something and you kind of fail or maybe
you learn about something, you don’t even attempt that because you’re like, “Man,
this is way too complicated. I didn’t sign up for this, I’m looking for something
that’s going to take me 15 minutes a day.” So you just kind of move to the next
tactic on your list and you consume more information and that doesn’t seem easy
enough, you move forward, etc. Which of course is a different side to it, it’s not
quite learned helplessness, that’s more like laziness. But in this episode I
really want to make you aware of the fact that a lot of the things you feel you
can’t do are simply learned responses to a bunch of failures that happened in
succession and one after the other where you’ve got conditioned, basically, that,
“You know what? There’s no point in trying anymore, because I know I’ll fail, so
why bother?” Just like that dog. Another great story by the way that illustrates
this point is when they bring an elephant into a circus and they got to tame the
elephant so they bring a baby elephant and they tie him to a stick in the ground.
Now the thing about is that the stick isn’t really big enough and it’s not being
secured hard enough for the elephant to not escape. Like the elephant can actually
easily escape, but after trying a couple times to pull it out and not succeeding,
not fully succeeding, the baby elephant learns that, “You know what? This is not
going to work, so I better stop trying.” All the sudden the baby often develops
this knowledge somehow that if he’s been tied to a stick or pole in the ground,
that’s pretty much it. He’s not able to move, he’s not able to go anywhere, that’s
why they say, “The elephant never forgets.” That’s the whole thing about that. But
the truth of the matter is, the baby elephant could pull that stick out and the
grown up elephant, which he later becomes could easily escape, could easily pull
that pole out of the ground but they don’t. They just don’t. They don’t even
attempt. They learn to be helpless, and that is, in my opinion of course, tragic.
Simply because think about all the things you gave up in life simply because you
learned to expect failure.

Think about all the things you have not achieved because you said to yourself,
“What’s the point in trying?” Think of all the amazing things you did not give to
this world or your family that you could have if you only tried again and again
and again and figured out new ways of doing it. I mean you know the answer, I
don’t have to convince you about it, you know that the answer is, “You haven’t
tried hard enough.” And chances are, you’re now saying they’re either in your car
or maybe like in the gym running right now, whatever. You’re thinking, “You know
what? What this crazy Russian says makes a lot of sense.” And all of the sudden
you have all these pictures and little scenes running through your mind of things
you could have done but you didn’t because he gave up, and that’s okay.

Acknowledging the fact that you could have done better is perfectly fine, but
right now I want you to focus on the present, and what is it that right now, what
are you attempting to do right now, where you keep bumping your head against a
wall that you’re not capable of doing for some reason, you’re not able to achieve
it, and yet you know that it’s that time when you have to become aware of the
learned helplessness concept and make sure you don’t fall into that trap. Okay?
Whatever that is for you. Whether it is writing your first email, whether it’s
running your first paid traffic campaign, maybe you’re running your second. Maybe
you wanted to attempt creating being your information product finally. Maybe you
decided to master retargeting and you didn’t do it because it was too complicated.
Whatever that is, whatever that is, don’t let the learned helplessness concept get
in the way for you, because that would be tragic. I mean you will regret this a
year, two, five, ten years down the road, saying, “You know what if I tried
harder? What if gave it one more shot? What if I consulted one more expert? What
if I read another book? Maybe I would have found the reason why I’m not
successful.” When we think about it, isn’t that the reason? Isn’t that difference
maker between the losers and the winners in this business? Like the losers, they
attempt something and they give up and they kind of move on and they attempt that,
they give up move on, and that sort of like, they’re stuck in this cycle, if you
will, where it’s always consuming new information, trying something out, failing
and then moving to the next thing. And of course with the in and giving them
plenty of options, they can keep doing it forever. But the winners, they have this
stubbornness about them were they refuse to take no for an answer from anybody. Be
it a person or a situation or the universe where they say, “Okay, this is my goal,
this is my ideal outcome and I’ve attempted A, B, C, D and E to make it happen,
but I still…” Oh man i just realized I have no idea what comes after E. “…but
they still have these other letters of the alphabet to attempt, and they keep
going, and they keep going, and they keep going, and admitting that they can’t do
something is probably the last thing on their list. They have this weird, almost
impossible, unexplainable, almost stupid stubbornness about them which makes them
obsess with achieving the goal no matter how many times they need to try again and
again and again and again. And really that’s how winners are born. If you watch,
there’s a great show that have just which my wife, great TV show called Genius,
it’s about Einstein. This guy developed his theory for years, I think close to a
decade it took him to develop the theory of relativity, if not more than that. And
then it took another several years to prove it, which means between actually
developing it and that being proved, there was so much time that he could have
easily doubted himself and a lot of things could have changed, but eventually was
proved and he won the recognition. But while a lot of people think that he was a
genius because it would just come to him in the flesh of inspiration all the
sudden he’s like, “Oh man, I know it’s MC2.” But it wasn’t, it was the result of
years of hard work on mathematical equations, understanding physics and trying to
fill all the missing pieces to this puzzle. Because he was trying, I mean he was
trying to figure out the universe. I think that’s more complicated than trying to
build an online business that makes you $100 a day. Way more complicated. And it
took away more time too. So what I’m saying is, even though he’s considered a
genius, Einstein, he worked really, really hard and he was stubborn and obsessed
about attempting it again and again and again and again and again, even when a
mathematician that was competing against him for developing a theory towards the
time when he was almost there, there was a mathematician that really didn’t
believe that physicists could solve complicated math problems, and so he raced
Einstein to complete theory, and he did it first. And he actually completed this
thing first, and Einstein gave up. He was just so discouraged, it was the end for
him. But even then he studied this guy’s equations and found a mistake in that
equation, which led to him developing this theory and finally finishing it and
coming up with the correct answer for the problem that he was basically trying to
solve for it close to a decade, if not more than that.

So what you learned from this is that he didn’t learn to be helpless, even after
failing in an abstract environment where there were no guidelines, rules, he
couldn’t measure its progress, he didn’t know whether he was close to solving it
or whether he was just in the beginning, so it was really difficult time for
Einstein, yet he kept on going and going and going in spite of being shot,
metaphorically speaking, all these years and being in pain. So if he could do it,
if he could figure out the universe, he was not a genius, it’s ironic that people
think that guys like Einstein are geniuses because they’re just simply obsessed
with one thing in their life and the devote their entire life to it. That’s how
genius, if you will, is born, then just think about how you can achieve your goals
by simply refusing to learn to be hopeless. So thanks again for tuning in for
another episode of the List Building Lifestyle, this is your host Igor Kheifets,
and until the next time we chat, have a good one.

Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle Show, make sure to
subscribe on iTunes or Google Play to never miss an episode because who knows just
one conversion tactic we share on the show might double your list and double your
business. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
listbuilderslifestyleshow.com and don’t forget to claim your complimentary copy
of “The Wealthy List Builder’s Survival Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival .
This is Igor Kheifets until next time we talk, have a good one.

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