Give yourself time to fail, and fail often.
These missteps will allow you to get clear on the person you’re becoming. Mistakes and failure happen to the best of us. Look at them as the only true measure of progress.
We get one trip on this ride called life and what a shame it’ll be to wake up one day, old, tired, with less time left on the clock, full of regrets of things you passed up on because you were afraid to fail.
Nothing you learn today will benefit you today.
A lot of the time lessons seem to store themselves safely in your mind as memories and experiences. They will travel with you, disguising themselves as useless information waiting for the right opportunity to shine.
But look at how far you’ve come! What skills have you acquired? What successes and failures have taught you the most about how to move forward?
All of your scars, bumps and bruises, heartaches, and headaches you get today are preparing you to be better tomorrow.
It takes time to learn who we are and what we’re made to be doing in life. Mainly because we have conditioned and prepared to take action and do good things with whom we’re becoming today.
So if all of these lessons reveal themselves over time, is there not a better time to get started than right now?! Nope, so get at it!
I used to be ashamed of my obsessions until I changed the things I’m obsessed about. One of my favorite things to do is to dream. To sit and think and imagine myself going round and round visualizing my next design project, what my next conversation with my next client will look like, and countless hours of how I wanted my life to turn out. Dreaming has become one of my greatest assets and my obsessions with the way I see things turning out is still a big deal for me. Then there are the voices, you know the ones that have an answer for everything and can never leave well enough alone? The voices that show up to kill every good thought you have because they think you’re not worth the good things you have planned for yourself. Turn out, those little shits have their own set of obsessions and if you’re not careful, they win.
So what do we do about it? How do we stop the madness?
(Disclaimer: I’m not a psychologist and none of the following has been tested or proven.)
+ How much time am I willing to dedicate to this particular thought? Good or bad.
+ What’s the up or downside and how long shall I wander around in there?
+ What am I going to do about anything I may find because I have to do something?
If I can answer and agree to those terms internally, then I play ball. No matter the situation, from having a better relationship with important people in my life to understanding my clients and my business better. If I don’t have answers for those questions first, I find something else to obsess over.
Well! It turns out they were right. And by They, I mean all of the experts that constantly told me that as soon as you make the decision to become an entrepreneur, no matter what your bar for success is, you immediately have to decide what’s your favorite flavor of shit sandwich? The journey you’re about to embark on, though it can be hella fun and have the potential to be freeing at times, it can and will be a royal pain in the ass a lot of the time.
That being said, you still have to jump. The road ahead is not void of situations that are designed to test your grit. It’s designed to test your physical, mental, and emotional toughness, and in most cases, its sole purpose is to make you want to quit even before you’ve given yourself a chance to win. The good news is that it’s all temporary. And all of these things are teaching you lessons for choices you’ll have to make as you build the business of your dreams.
I’ve never been a fan of giving advice on topics that I know nothing about or have not tried out for myself. That’s not how this thing works for me. So no matter if you’re just getting started as a business owner, or perhaps you’ve been at it for a while and need to get unstuck, try writing down all of the things you know you’re not good at. All the things you’ve been avoiding mastering because someplace in the back of your mind you know you might really suck at it. Get all of those things on paper, then position yourself to get better at it.
For example, it may turn out that you don’t want to be a social media guru spending hours making content to promote your brand or maybe becoming master at shooting and editing video of yourself for the world to place judgment on is not your jam either. Do them anyway. Most likely you’ll find that you’re really good at one or two things. What you learn from doing it yourself, at least in the beginning is a better knowledge of how all of these things work, and what it takes to get shit done!
All this is setting you up for the win. So when the day comes that you can afford to pay someone to take those tasks off your plate. It won’t be for a lack of not knowing and you will be able to give them clear instructions for what you want.
Find those things you think you suck at and just get better at them!
Back on the road after spending the last week visiting my brother in West Virginia, I was asked what my favorite part of the trip was. After thinking out loud about how hanging out with my family, the good food, and the many conversations were all a good time for me.
But as I look at the rolling hills and grayish-blue skies in West Virginia, I’m realizing that I’m still having the best part of my trip right now! I’m in a vessel with people I love, talking and laughing. And it seems like every time I look up, the landscape has changed. Even with 11 or so hours left to go, and frustration, restlessness, and few dozen are-we-there-yets par for the course.
The process of living for right now is still a work in progress for me. The good part is, the more aware I am that the future has taken priority over the present, the easier I find it to slow down and take life as it comes.
So while on this trip I have no doubts that more laughs and a few more good stories are still on the horizon. Mile after mile, through every state on the way home, I think I’m still having the best part of this trip.
I’ve been thinking a lot about words and how they affect conversations lately.
How do the things I say sound?
Does the tone and pitch decide how or who understands what I’m saying?
Are some of the things I say better understood by some people than others?
And how does the weight they carry impact others?
How is what I’m saying affecting my conversations and how does that vary from person to person?
If words are truly heavy, shouldn’t we spend more time getting them right?
I’m paying more attention now, not to just the words but also to the sounds, the tones, and the pitches. This way my responses will be the right ones and be more valuable in turn.
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