For a long time, I had a history of killing houseplants. They just weren’t able to survive on my watch, somehow.
My brother, a brilliant gardener, has a house full of beautifully blossoming plants; I repeatedly watched spider plants wither away.
Until I learned the secret to houseplants is attention. You have to see the plants.
This might seem obvious.
I knew they were there but failed to consciously see them. And my failure to really see them caused their failure to survive.
There are lots of challenges we can take on and then turn our attention away. When we fail, it can be hard to see why.
The answer, often, is attention. We committed to sight reading every day, but failed to notice it. We were given a new diet by our physician, but after a few weeks, our attention went elsewhere and we didn’t notice the old diet creep back in.
From the outside, it can seem crystal clear: “Why doesn’t he see the obvious cause of his failure?” But when in the middle of failing at something, our brain is clever at turning the attention elsewhere.
Now I’ve got a bunch of thriving plants around my house. My solution to force attention is making it systematic. I have days every week when I check the water of every plant.
Your mind doesn’t want to fail, so it turns your attention away. Your best chance at success is to override it and force yourself to look and change your behavior to succeed.