Article By: Martha Amaro
Contributing Writer

“This can’t be happening again!”

I was so confused and overwhelmed! If it had only been the first time, I could probably
understand it, and even justify it.
But this was NOT my first attempt. By this time, I had not only incurred HUGE college loan debt,
but I was over $30,000 into courses, trainings, and certifications.
“I’m a smart woman!” I thought to myself!

“WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME?!?!?!”
That’s when I realized the true source of my frustrations and failures.
Once this discovery became clear, I was able to move past the walls I had erected between me
and my success. This ONE discovery has altered and elevated my life and the lives of those
around me more than any other realization or “aha moment” I’ve had since.

TRIPPING ON THE SAME ROCK
In Spanish we have a saying which loosely translates to: “I tripped again, on the same rock.”
That saying alludes to the many times in which we trip and stumble, complain and argue, and
drive ourselves to a state of despair, only to find that we’re making the same poor decisions
over and over again.
You know, like when you promise yourself you’re gonna finally lose the weight, only to fall for
one fad diet after another, keeping you in a yo-yo of weight loss and gain.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the situation I was in.
My greatest, deepest desire was to get out of teaching!
Being in the classroom was killing me (literally and figuratively!). Plus, I had just given birth to
my second baby, and I was working so hard to use my maternity leave as a time to figure out
how to start my own profitable business, so I could stay home with my beautiful baby girls.
But, NOTHING WORKED!!!
See, I kept tripping on the same rock!

I thought that the trick was finding just the right strategy that would take me to the promised land
of freedom and security that I envisioned being an entrepreneur meant.
So, I did my research, completed my due diligence, and understanding that you HAVE to invest
in yourself, I pulled out my wallet and purchased THE course I was certain would be the key to
living the life of my dreams.
Can you guess what happened?
Yep, NOTHING!
I went through the entire course, learned some stuff, implemented what I could, and 2 months
later I was in the hole a couple of thousand dollars.
But, I was not about to give up!
So, I did some more research, completed additional due diligence, invested some more money,
completed the course, implemented some stuff, AND…
NOTHING!
This cycle went on for years!
I learned everything from affiliate marketing, to funnels, to blogging, to video marketing, to direct
marketing…
You name it, I tried it.
Then, it hit me.

EVERY STRATEGY WORKS…

This brings us back to the beginning of this story.
One night in desperate frustration, I found myself repeating a conversation I had had MANY
times with myself…
“Why?”
“Why does this keep happening?”
“Why can’t I figure this out?”
“Why am I so stuck?”

“Why can’t I get the success others are experiencing?”
“WHYYYYYYY?”

That was my moment of realization.
Other people were, in fact, experiencing success with the programs and strategies I failed at.
Every strategy worked!!
Plus, I refused to believe that every person I bought a program from was deliberately out to trick
people into giving them their money.
So, if every strategy worked, then there was only ONE explaantion left: ME!

WHAT WASN’T WORKING
I don’t know if you’ve seen The Santa Clause movies, but in the 3rd movie Santa and the elves
are trying to come up with a solution to a problem that is threatening Christmas.
After one of the elves asks a question, Santa replies: “The answer is in the question.”
What does this have to do with anything we’ve been talking about?
Now, THAT is a great question.
See my moment of realization AND the discovery of THE foundation for success came from
understanding that the answer to my problem was actually in the questions I was asking.
Take a second and go back to take a closer look at the questions I was asking myself.
Really, go look. I’ll wait…
Did you see a pattern?

All the questions I was asking had 3 things in common:
1. They all start with “why.”
2. They all used unhelpful language.
3. Most importantly, they formed part of my Internal Communication Systems (or
Self-Talk)
Let’s break this down, shall we?
First of all, “why questions”, for the most part, are futile.

Unless we’re strategically using “why questions” as a tool to leverage our reasons and
motivation for moving forward, the tendency is to use these types of questions in an attempt to
assign blame and/or fault.
Let me tell you, there is no exercise more inefficacious than assigning blame or fault.
Ultimately, who or what caused it, or why we ended up in a situation does nothing to help us
solve it. All this does is give us an excuse to let ourselves off the hook and relinquish
responsibility to others. Which turns us into victims (a position of limited and ineffective power).
Then, I noticed the verbiage in my questions.

Can you see how that language took the power out of my hands, and immediately made me a
victim?
Additionally, once I said things like “I CAN’T figure it out?”, it was game over. My brain had now
been told that there was no way we could do this thing, so why even try to come up with
solutions or alternatives?
Even more powerful than these two new elements of awareness, was the understanding that
what made all of these things worse was the source!
I was telling MYSELF these things.
Yes, there HAD to be an initial experience or programming that installed these thoughts in my
brain. But, ultimately it was I who fed and nurtured these thoughts. It was my own Internal
Communication Systems that kept these, and many other unhelpful thoughts, set as default
responses to what I perceived as challenges or failures.

THE FOUNDATION FOR SUCCESS

And so, once again, the answer was in the question.
Or in this case, QUESTIONS!
The foundation for success was NOT in the strategies, courses, or trainings (even though they
help and everyone SHOULD invest in coaching and mentoring of some sort).
The foundation of success was NOT in the perfection or urgency with which I executed the
things I learned (although there will DEFINITELY be no success without action and
implementation).