When I was a kid, I went through a phase of loving everything Bruce Springsteen.
I’d seen him on TV and thought he was cool. So I asked my parents if I could have a guitar for my birthday.
I got the guitar, the same one as Bruce, and began to take lessons.
Every Tuesday with my guitar strapped to my back, I would ride my bike to the local music store where I would sit in a small dark soundproofed booth for my weekly lesson.
Week after week I was being taught, what I thought to be, very simple lessons that somehow were slowing me down from the progress I could make on my own. I soon became impatient with my guitar lessons and quit.
Suffice it to say, my plans of being the next Bruce did not live long.
Looking back now, I recall being impatient with my progress, because I was too focused on achieving an imagined result.
But no one stopped me to explain I was expecting too much, too soon.
And as a result, I missed the chance to learn a valuable lesson on the power of deliberate and sustained practice.
Indeed, no one would point this out until a decade later when my Tibetan lama taught me this lesson in a manner I would never forget. I wrote about this Karate Kid moment in the article, How to Bend Like a Piece of Wood.
Now, beneath this problem of misaligned expectations, is the real cause, and, I believe, the actual reason for my failure as a Springsteen wannabe.
And that is what I call, The Achievement Problem.