Soaring Success

For anyone unfamiliar with the Schrödinger experiment, the hypothetical model of “Schrödinger’s Cat” is a thought experiment, commonly described as a paradox, which was originally devised by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. Schrödinger hypothesized the idea of “All Possibilities” can be summarized using an imagined set of conditions involving a cat, a sealed box, and a vile of hydrocyanic acid.

The Theory

For the purposes of this article, I’ll give you a very quick and simplified explanation (from a behaviorist perspective) of the experiment: if you seal a cat, along with a vile of hydrocyanic acid, into a box which you have no perceptual access to (visually, auditorally, kinesthetically, etc.) then quantum mechanics would say that the cat is in a suspended state of being both alive and dead at the same time. How it works is that, if you have no way of knowing what’s happened within the box, then you have no way to tell if the vile has been broken or not … if it has, the cat is dead, but if it hasn’t then the cat is still alive. Until you open the box and check there is no way to know with certainty — and this means that all possibilities must exist at the same time … also referred to as a “Quantum Superposition”.

The Application

Now, the same theory applies to achievable goal setting — if you set a goal and work towards it, no matter what you do there is no way to be absolutely certain of what the results will be … thus, all possibilities of success and failure must exist at the same time. This is where most people have an issue — not because they can’t perceive the existence of all possibilities be available at once; rather, most people don’t like such a huge degree of uncertainty about the outcome. Subsequently, people will treat goal-setting much like getting presents — if you really, really want to know whether or not you got what you asked for then you’ll need to shake the gift-box. Or, to explain it in different way, ask any professional baker or chef — if you’re baking a cake and you constantly open and close the oven every 15 seconds to see if it’s finished, they’ll all agree that you’ll only end up ruining the cake.

Although it may be difficult, to achieve great success we must learn to control our need for control when working towards our dreams. This is the main reason people never strive to excel beyond their basic abilities — if you only attempt to do the things that you know with certainty you’ll succeed at, then you’ll never get better or achieve more than you already have. However, for those of you with the confidence and drive to strive beyond your current limits, you too must learn to accept the fact you can’t control all the variable of success and failure. When you’re anxious about potentially failing, the act of constantly worrying is equivalent to shaking Schrödinger’s cat … by shaking the box you are more likely to break the vile of cyanide and kill the cat and, in the same way, constantly worrying about failure will keep you from doing the things you need in order to succeed.

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