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.