Merry Christmas to All

The fear of failure should never prevent you from trying something important to you

Screwing Up On Purpose- Testing Boundaries

Everyone is afraid of failure and equally so, everybody is afraid of being embarrassed. Sometimes, without doing it on purpose, we set ourselves up for such assumptions of failure and embarrassment through poor planning or the lack of testing boundaries. What this translates to is that we all make or set a standard or level of assumptions. Most will agree that assumptions are risky and dictate our future as well as our own actions.

We may sabotage ourselves before we ever take the first step towards success. For many, that is just too high of a risk to take and makes them believe they aren’t good enough to try it so they don’t. It is that simple. They don’t even try it. Thus, when faced with a difficult challenge or task, we must test these boundaries set up to help us become better and learn from our mistakes.

The late Robert Gunther in the Harvard Business Review in 2006 said that: True deliberate mistakes are expected, on the basis of current assumptions, to fail and not be worth the cost of the experiment…. But if such a mistake unexpectedly succeeds… [it] creates opportunities for profitable learning. In other words: if we fail, we learn something. If we succeed, our long-shot risk actually paid off. By reframing tough tasks as “deliberate mistakes” we can help remove all of the pressure that can keep us frozen, all while learning something along the way.

Most deliberate mistakes, as expected, don’t work out. your instinct, therefore, should be to avoid them or to minimize the impact of such approach. On the other hand, you may be missing a great opportunity and miss out on what you may learn from such actions. When fundamental assumptions are wrong, people can achieve success more quickly by deliberately making errors than by considering only data that support the assumptions. It’s a hands-on approach that can be controlled to a large degree and because it was an intentional mistake, the investment was low and less costly as well as risky.

The downside of failure wasn’t that bad. Even if you took into consideration all the dynamics involved in the failure, would have banked crucial knowledge of what caused it or what the gaps were. Here are some hints to make safer mistakes.

Scrutinize your assumptions – Our innermost assumptions are the fuel for deliberate mistakes.  What are the rules you follow without thinking? Do you avoid public speaking opportunities or leadership roles? Pick one out and think about something you could do to put it to the test – in which the downside is low and what you will learn is potentially very valuable.  For example, if you tend to avoid public speaking, you could volunteer to do a talk on a favorite subject at your local library or coffee shop, and invite a friendly audience, as opposed to trying a TED talk. This is a process we commonly call ‘breaking the ice’ and it works well.

Be prepared to fail — Don’t put too much stake in the outcome. You probably won’t succeed. But as long as the cost is low and you are prepared, it won’t hurt a bit.

Do your best – This is the hard part. When you don’t expect to succeed at something, your self-protective instincts can affect your effort. If you don’t do your best, you effectively guarantee that you won’t succeed – and you give yourself a flawed data set to measure against. But, more importantly, you reduce the lessons you learn even if you fail. So, you must, must, must do your very best to succeed.

Compare reality to assumptions – If you fail, if the mistake proceeds as expected, you will have a list of lessons that you gained from the experience. Which of your assumptions were correct, and which didn’t hold up?  What surprised you? Use this list to plan your next development steps, so that the next time you venture into this experience, you will have a much better chance to succeed.

Deliberate mistakes are an underutilized tool in our personal growth. They are not natural and don’t arise by default. But, if approached the right way, they can propel us forward and provide us crucial information to guide our future development. To paraphrase Henry Ford, if you believe you can’t do something, you’re always right.

Only Time will tell - a poem for things of the past -

Only time will tell -

Old things have passed, the world has changed but inside your soul remains steady and the same as it has been for the last few decades. You know who you are and although most people don’t understand you like once before your mind, heart and soul is about to close the door. Your mind has grown, your body has become weary but your heart still beats with the passion that life has given you to enjoy your journey on Earth. Time is not kind but time will surely side with the love you have inside as it whispers the love they have in your ears and make you smile.

Through the years, you have found and lost family and friends who thought they knew you like nobody else did before. They were people who sometimes dug into the soul or flesh to get to know you better. They didn’t know there is no way to completely know the other person so well we could call them intimately and close confidants but they had loved you regardless of the cost.

Knowing someone is a penetrating moment of looking into the mirror of their eyes and see what they want to see. They want to know you but instead they search to know themselves. So in every sense, they never really know who you are as they are focused on their own identities rather than inspecting the unnerving and uncomfortable task of knowing you. Whether they like it or not, they will never completely know you. All those things that cover up the reality of your own personality are well hidden by the flesh and bone, even as you stand there naked to their mind. They fail each time in their pursuit to completely know you.

So without pretense, you weathered the storms of your live, your love and your trust of others and the loyalty of some and the betrayal of others. All that is achieved during the course of living is revealed at the end. Gone is the time for fishing for details of who you are as by now, it really doesn’t matter. Through the true ambition of loving life, you have already found the peace and bliss you have been looking for and what they say or do also doesn’t matter.

Going back in time, you thought about the pretense in life, the propriety of love and hate and the protocols to make other people happy. In the sense of shame and blame, you have been stripped emotionally psychologically and physically in the great pursuit of happiness. The need for intense relationships has passed. My true lust and trust now lies within myself and one other person. There are clear and distinct relationships that have formed into other forms of romance, companionship and supporting each other. Although there are moments of romantic hunger, the love has become an ember from the flame but a flame regardless of any other name.

A relationship that has morphed from a solid inner intimacy to another shape of distinguished emotion of love and devotion. As time passes by, you can leave the next morning with all your secrets and details of life behind. Only one person may know who you really are but time will soon erase that memory as well. Only time will tell.

My Vanishing Point -

My Vanishing Point

Today, God’s covenants were never broken. He kept his part of the promise to give me life to the fullest if I accepted Him and His Son, Jesus Christ into my life. Two covenants made decades ago when I starred the fate of death right into the face of darkness as evil surrounded me and no exit to the light was shown except the path of accepting God as my Lord and Savior.

At that moment, I saw a vision of God or His Angels. Out of the deep of death, came life and hope. The star above guided me to the ways of going to heaven.  Thinking of my parents, who passed away beyond the human vanishing points in life, I began to realize the reality they are still alive but in another form of life as promised by our Father, our God, and Lord.

At a split moment, the thoughts of death vanished into the air as my heart was filled with of  living and bringing my soul back to where it could be in tune with my mind  as the stare of death was flushed from my eyes and the touch of the light warmed my flesh.

Trying to wrap my head around the concept of the hell and horrors of war around me, I grabbed onto the fact that God is love and love is God. This by itself brought to me the love for life and the passion for living longer with his spiritual guidance by my side.

No longer was this a futile endeavor to survive the horror around me and as I promised my eternal word to serve the Lord, the concept of eternity began to shape inside my head. Suddenly, the thoughts of death vanished as the fruits of hope gathered strength to bring the past to an end and start a new beginning.

Thus in my own experience, I went from a vanishing point to another vanishing point in a flash of a second when God and His Angels saved me from certain death. Without dwelling into my Vietnam War experiences, I can honestly say I saw visions of death and of life – both very excruciating to watch.

Reflecting those moments almost constantly throughout my life, I know that God is always by my side and never once left me alone. Put into words that make more sense, the moment I made my promise to God, I knew that my life would be everlasting taking me from the vanishing point of the past to the vanishing point of the future.

Of course, the vanishing points refer to manmade vanishing points, not God’s. We know that God’s time and space are eternal and our time is limited on Earth unlike it is in Heaven. This made me think that God was eternal. It made me realize that God had eternity in His heart.

I knew as long as I kept my promise to serve Him, my pledge and His covenant to bring me eternal life would remain intact and bring me the ultimate blessings sought for in my life.

There were no thoughts of my cheated continuous existence here on Earth before vanishing beforehand in my time and space as I was being  faithful to Him and that my mortality lasted only as long as I lived but that it would be revitalized with eternally lasting existence after my time on Earth is done.

Without having a panicking moment, I knew that God lasted well beyond the end of my life and that my eternal life depended upon a God who is from everlasting to everlasting just like the good book teaches us it to be. This is where my vanishing point comes into play – thinking about eternity today.

If the vanishing point in life is manmade then there is no vanishing point for God then all evidence points to the fact that He is eternal. His time and space are defined by infinity and if you multiply infinity by infinity you still get infinity. For a person, infinity is the largest number there is except for infinity plus one.

Thinking about eternity is a lot to deal with. For my whole life, I was made a creature of time and space. I only thought of time and space as the environment and the surrounding elements dictated to me. There was no wiggle room as science had mandated we live in time zones and by the clock. In other words, I can only think in terms of time.

Trying to grasp that God is up above and beyond time while at the same time in the middle of time is hard to imagine or accept. If I didn’t have the faith I have in God,  I just can’t do it!  But then, I don’t really need to understand what this is all about as I let my faith carry me   through   the difficult moments and logical thinking. 

All I need to know is that my time and my times and my eternity is linked up to the God who is eternal. This translated that all of the time from Genesis 1:1 to the last page of Revelations is what the world is all about and then gone as human time vanishes but God’s time is everlasting. Eternal means Everlasting, forever, unto perpetuity, the world without end. 

I am eternal because my immortality is linked to the eternal of Jesus Christ.  Because He is eternal, I too am eternal in Him.Thus my vanishing point only exists in my home, and my future as I exist in the mortal world of time and space. With His covenant of eternal life, I can rest in the assurance that my eternalness has no end no matter how I may feel as a human when my time to die comes. I have my home in Him. My future is safe with Him. I can rest in the assurance that my eternalness never has an end because God’s eternalness never has an end.

So as I found God in my youth days, the vanishing point of my life has been a little concern for me as I knew as long as I kept my promise to Him, He would keep His promise to me – that being that I will live eternally and dwell in His home. Needless to say, this gave me quite a bit of confidence in my mortality and gave me the energy and spirit to take chances in life. I remember the pleasure I received from knowing my Creator is watching over me and that all is set for me to pass on without any obstacles and freedoms to join those who passed away before me.

Now, the years draw near and the vanishing point of time and space are closing in on me. Causing me some anxiety to the degree of not wanting to burden my loved one with all the care and arrangements needed to take care of me when I die, I can find comfort in the fact that it will all be done right and that the eternal flame of life is waiting for me.

Rightfully so, I spend more time watching the moon, the stars, and the universe up above me. I rightfully feel that I will be up there soon and as I draw nearer to that vanishing point moment, I do not tremble with fear. I know that soon, the light of the sun will darken, the stars will shine brightly and the silence will come with joyous sounds of heaven. This is my eternal journey that I am waiting for – this is beyond any vanishing point man can make in time or space.

But I am also certain that this will not come before God’s plan for me is finished. I know that every step of His plan is dynamic and moving into the right direction. Therefore I know the sun will not darken before the time of eternity is here. Even after the clouds darken and the rain and thunder come near, I know that until the right time comes, I will not vanish from here or anywhere else until it is time to go.

As I walk down the streets of life, I see strong men bow to others with humility and honor. I see them show compassion and love to those less fortunate than them and offer them the warmth of their spirits of hope. I pray that their homes are not made of doors and windows that shut closed forever. That their hearts remain open and their fears remain small as the birds come up to them closely and eat the bread crumbs right out of their hands trusting them with their lives and well-being.

As the final days  of my promised blissful human life passes slowly, a stare of death brings the realization of  a vanishing loneliness as harsh as the coldest most bitter winter is it flushes my eyes with the tears of aging beyond the light of the most solitary star in the universe. To feel alone in a sea filled with other creatures is depressing and gloomy as my spirits had sunk as low as the bottom of the sea. Lying there, below the third layer of my wrinkled skin is the bountiful hope of eternal bliss awaiting the end. Although it would be a lie to say I fear no fear, it is true that the fear I have is not what will happen to be but what I leave behind.

We all want to leave a legacy of love, hope and charity behind for those who follow us into the promised land. We all pray of dreams coming true and giving our loved ones the bliss they rightfully deserve and pray for. So as I find my vanishing point coming nearer and nearer, I am preparing my soul for my life that God has promised me. For the eternal life is coming and the blessings received are well worth the waiting. Amen.