We are repeatedly told that we should forget about unpleasant experiences (failures) and focus on pleasant ones (successes). I agree totally with last part of this proposition but only partly with bit on forgetting about your unpleasant experiences.

Rather, I think unpleasant experiences must be confronted and "neutralized", otherwise they will always be lurking in your subconscious, ever ready to pounce upon you.

Don't delude yourself into thinking that they can simply and safely be swept under carpet. Pull them right out and cut them down to size.

Clip their wings before they come back out to haunt you and poison your life.

These are ferocious little beasts that create pernicious feelings of guilt, anger, powerlessness leading straight to anxiety, depression and lowered self-esteem. These are creatures of Darkness and nothing terrifies them as much as Light.

Pull them out and examine them in broad daylight and then you'll realize they are not as terrible as they seem.

In broad daylight, they melt away and become not just innocuous but even useful: they teach you lessons in what NOT to do.

And that is how you can learn from failure and turn negative experiences into positive, highly empowering lessons.

And "all's well that ends well"! In words of Dr. Jill Ammon-Wexler: "Every successful person throughout history has also faced and dealt with their own personal collection of fears and negative internal messages".

Anybody can do it!

Reserve some time to be by yourself or, better still, at night, before you fall off to sleep

We are repeatedly told of necessity to plan. "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail", "Plan your work, work your plan" etc.

In terms of goalsetting and achieving goals, when people talk of planning, they generally mean:

1. You set your goals

2. You make a plan for achieving your goals

This, for us, is putting things upside down. And we are going to put things right back on their feet.

If planning is really necessary, it is much more UPSTREAM, i.e. BEFORE goalsetting - you decide what you want, when, where, how you are going to "affirm and visualize", than DOWNSTREAM i.e. AFTER goalsetting - how you are going to achieve your goals.

This "upstream planning" is generally not considered as planning. It is normally called "decision-making": You decide WHAT, explore reasons WHY, and organize your affirming and visualizing activity (time, place etc.)

This is different from planning :

For example if your goal is to buy a house in 1 year's time, you would be planning for HOW to achieve you goal (save, invest, work more etc.)

Now I am going to shock you with one little-known success mindset secret: once you know exactly what you want, visualization is more important - even more necessary - than planning, in other words, thinking about how you are going to enjoy whatever you want once you get it is more important - even more necessary - than thinking about how to get it in first place!