THE THREE PAIN POINTS OF SUCCESS
By Bill Cottringer


There are three main pain points of any serious success journey via the common path to success—surviving failure. These are the lessons that come after the tests. They are:

• The tripping point.
• The tipping point.
• The match point.

THE TRIPPING POINT

The trips and falls that start and keep failures persisting can come from all directions. But one very common monkey on everybody’s back involves the terrible twins within--pride and ego. These little devils help you maintain the illusion that you have to figure it out all by yourself and do it all your way, and that you know at least half of what you want others to think you know about something important at hand.

The only thing I know that doesn’t make any progress on purpose is a rocking horse. So if you are stuck in the muck of this pain point it is because you are simply pretending to be someone else other than who you really are. And that is because you haven’t taken he time to get to know your true self—mainly the actual person who resides in the gap between who you are and who you want to be. There is only one way to get a clearer picture of that person, and that is to jump into the trenches and look and listen to what you see and hear. Of course if you don’t want to get your feet muddy, you can just go sit down at a comfortable park bench and be a good observer. Either way seems to work.

THE TIPPING POINT

The tipping point on this painful journey to success via failure involves getting to know yourself—especially the purpose, meaning and passion that drives you to want to be somebody, make a difference. or accomplish something of value. The major transformation occurs when you can accept the harsh reality of ‘all that you think you know may not necessarily be so.’ This transformational paradigm shift opens the door to learning what you need to know to move past failure and move to match point.

The tipping point can take longer and be more painful than most people have patience for, and oddly it is the next pain point that requires the patience of Job. The pain comes from trying to give up nonsensical beliefs in your head, about such things as success, happiness and peace of mind, so that you can replace them with definitions that help you close the gap between your real and ideal selves. Put another way, you are struggling to solve the central paradox in life—how to have your cake and eat it too. As it turns out you can, by running faster and moving the finish line closer, both at the same time or anything else that can help you get more by doing less.

THE MATCH POINT

This last pain point is the real wait—the game deciding match-point ball hits the net and goes straight up. Whichever side it falls forward to wins and whichever side it falls back on loses. The match point is the closest thing to luck and chance you can be part of. Actually all the earlier “butterfly effects” are often too subtle to notice and the normal vision of this point puts talent, determination and action as close as they need to be in proximity to opportunity to get the wished-for results. This match point translates to the overnight success that takes ten years to occur.

The real pain during this match point, is to hold onto the tenacity to keep believing in yourself when others are beginning to question both your efforts and your results. Getting to the match point ball falling on the other player’s side also requires the courage to break through and express unpopular possibilities that you finally discovered in the 5% truthful sense you managed to sift from the 95% BS nonsense that was crowding your mind. This separates you from the crowd and it can be lonely alone without the company of other match-point winners.

So, these are the three main pain points of real success that can’t seem to be avoided. But their purpose is a good one—to help you to earn the victory you deserve. The biggest tripping point that won’t lead to a tipping point or a match point, is trying to avoid these three pain points. The good news is that you can’t do that, even when you try. All you are doing is slowing down the inevitable—progress from tripping point to tipping point to match point. Where are you in this journey?


William Cottringer is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue WA. He is author of several books including You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too: Closing the Gap Between Where You Are & Where You Want To Be, and The Bow-Wow Secrets: How Dogs Live Simple Lives & People Don’t. Bill can be reached for comments and questions at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer.pssp.net