Setting Yourself Up For Failure Quotes & Sayings

We must embrace the fact that if we don't commit to thinking and living differently than most people now, we are setting ourselves up to endure a life of mediocrity, struggle, failure and regret-just like most people. — Hal Elrod

Quitting-it was a dirty word in a place where pilgrims had endured harsh winters and where pioneers had struggled through death and disease to create new lives. Giving up or stepping back or setting aside something you thought you wanted- it was almost a shameful act. — Deb Caletti

You're always just trying to create opportunities and be ready when those opportunities present themselves. I can't look at anybody and think 'I want to be Damian Lewis' - I'd be setting myself up for failure. — Diego Klattenhoff

I never look at failing as an option anyhow. I believe thinking you could fail is already shooting yourself in the foot and setting yourself up for failure. — Ashley Purdy

Wherever there's an all-encompassing 'always,' 'all' or 'never' in your life, it's a sign that your mischievous subconscious is setting you up for failure by consistently leading you back toward these repeat performances. — Karen Salmansohn

Just take it a day at a time. If you think, "I'm never drinking again in my life," you're setting yourself up for failure. But if you just think, "I'm not drinking today," then get through that day and just stay consistent. Consistency is basically the root to everything; it's the root to all success. Consistency is key. — Ryan Montgomery

I think it's practical to follow your dreams since that's what will make you happy. Isn't it actually impractical to do something we don't like? That'd be setting ourselves up for failure. — Gwendolyn Heasley

Aim low and you won't be disappointed. — Chuck Palahniuk

I realize that a writer's business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed-and trying to save him-again and again; forever. — John Irving

Strategic Failure: The ill-will caused by drone strikes are not reducing the threat of terrorism but increasing it. While there were many individuals who once had positive views of the United States, new polling shows the anti-American sentiment effect of drone strikes. Such sentiments discredit diplomatic and NGO efforts to address the civilian and political issues in sveral countries, and potentially drive people into the ranks of militant organizations. Finally, in the very long run, they share our concern about the danger of setting precedent. They envision a future where not only do countries have the ability to indiscriminately attack people, but that dangerous and radical non-state actors can do so as well. — Harry Jones

What messes us up a lot in this life is setting our expectations way too high and then being ashamed when we fail. What is worse is when we allow other people to make us feel ashamed for failing. What is worse than that is hiding and lying about our failure. It's ok to fail, especially when it's a significant life change and you gotta stand up for that right in this life. — Tanya Masse

If you have a level of expectation in your life that you have to be a quote-unquote star, whatever that means, you might be setting yourself up for failure. — Bryan Cranston

Setting aside its failure to win over most people, the Bible can't even communicate clearly to the people who already cherish it deeply and believe in it with all their heart. — Guy P. Harrison

What is it like to feel Tao? It is an effortless flowing, a sweeping momentum. It is like bird song soaring and gliding over a vast landscape. You can feel this in your life: Events will take on a perfect momentum, a glorious cadence. You can feel it in your body: The energy will rise up in you in a thrilling crescendo, setting your very nerves aglow. You can feel it in your spirit: You will enter a state of such perfect grace that you will resound over the landscape of reality like ephemeral bird song.
When Tao comes to you in this way, ride it for all that you are worth. Don't interfere. Don't stop - that brings failure, alienation, and regret. Don't try to direct it. Let it flow and follow it. When the Tao is with you, put aside all other concerns. As long as the song lasts, follow. Just follow. — Ming-Dao Deng

Even if i'm setting myself up for failure, I think it's worth trying to be a mother who delights in who her children are, in their knock-knock jokes and earnest questions. A mother who spends less time obseessing about what will happen, or what has happened, and more time reveling in what is. A mother who doesn't fret over failings and slights, who realizes her worries and anxieties are just thoughts, the continuous chattering and judgement of a too busy mind. A mother who doesn't worry so much about being bad or good but just recognizes that she's both, and neither. A mother who does her best, and for whom that is good enough, even if, in the end, her best turns out to be, simply, not bad. — Ayelet Waldman

If you do nothing but urge people to "look out for number one," you will be setting them up for future failure in any relationship, especially marriage. — Timothy Keller

Of course, when you fall out of love, it's rarely about just one failure or one betrayal, is it? ...
How does it happen? All those things you once loved about each other are replaced by other things that remind you of something you hate until you're always setting each other off, and what you share is a battleground. In the end, the failure turns out to be less about sex - which surprises most men - and more about loss of respect. One morning your partner looks at you across the bed and wonders at the waywardness of her own heart - how, she asks herself, can she feel such disdain for someone she once felt such love? — Frederick Weisel

Remember, healing through forgiveness takes place in the soul and subconscious, not by a face to face confrontation that ends in hugging and tears of joy. In fact, chances are that would never happen anyway, so you are setting yourself up for failure if that is your expectation. — Sharon Critchfield

To fall is not to fail. To fail is to never fall because I never got up in the first place. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The failure to take seriously what the Nazis themselves said is comprehensible enough. There is hardly an aspect of contemporary history more irritating and mystifying than the fact that of all the great unsolved political questions of our century, it should have been this seemingly small and unimportant Jewish problem that had the dubious honor of setting the whole infernal machine in motion. Such discrepancies between cause and effect outrage our common sense, to say nothing of the historian's sense of balance and harmony. Compared with the events themselves, all explanations of antisemitism look as if they had been hastily and hazardously contrived, to cover up an issue which so gravely threatens our sense of proportion and our hope for sanity. — Hannah Arendt

Learning to accept failure on multiple levels is, to my way of thinking, the key to become a world-class therapist. But that means humility, and setting your ego aside, while you develop superb new technical skills. — David D. Burns

Codependence means we are depending on something outside of ourselves to provide our sense of wellbeing and are not being true to ourselves and our own feelings. As long as we keep believing that we can make someone else happy or that someone else has the power to make us happy, we are setting ourselves up for frustration, failure, and possibly victimization. — Roz Van Meter

Most social acts have to be understood in their setting and lose meaning if isolated ... No error in thinking about social facts is more serious than the failure to see their place and function. — Solomon Asch

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation. — Graham Greene

The truth is that we won't receive the support we need until we ask for it. Just because we can do it all doesn't mean we should. And when we don't speak up about our needs, we're asking our loved ones to read our minds - and then we resent them when they fail our test. By not being open and honest about the support we need, we're selling ourselves short and setting our relationships up for failure. — Jessica Ortner

I don't think in terms of failure ... I don't feel like anyone outside of me should be setting limitations. People should be encouraged to shoot for the moon. — Whoopi Goldberg

I've written about the giving of trust as though it were a simple formula for building loyalty. But it isn't simple at all. The talent that is an essential ingredient of leadership tells the leader whom to trust and how much to trust and when to trust. The rule is (as with children) that trust be given slightly in advance of demonstrated trustworthiness. But not too much in advance. You have to have an unerring sense of how much the person is ready for. Setting people up for failure doesn't make them loyal to you; you have to set them up for success. Each time you give trust in advance of demonstrated performance, you flirt with danger. If you're risk-averse, you won't do it. And that's a shame, because the most effective way to gain the trust and loyalty of those beneath you is to give the same in equal measure. — Tom DeMarco

Fear of failure is expressed in negative goal-setting, indecisiveness, and fear of adverse consequences — Sunday Adelaja

If you start thinking that only your biggest and shiniest moments count, you're setting yourself up to feel like a failure most of the time. — Chris Hadfield

I went to my favourite meeting of the year, the Southern 100, and my Honda 600 threw a con-rod, splitting the case and letting oil spill onto the exhaust, setting the bike on fire. Race fans at the roadside poured beer and bottles of water over it to put out the flames. After the TT race failure I'd had with the bike I wouldn't have been bothered if they'd let it burn. — Guy Martin

I find that goal setting, when done this way, leads to goal achieving. The chronic failure to achieve goals lowers self-esteem. Show me a failure to achieve a goal, and usually I can show you the violation of one or more of the above criteria. Imposed goals, vague goals, and unrealistic goals tend to produce only partial successes and outright failures. — Neal A. Maxwell