The F Word
Failure is one of the most underrated concepts in the world. It is one of the most underrated powers in the world. It impacts every human on the planet all day long, every single day, both physically and mentally, both consciously and sub-consciously. Every second our body components are working together to not fail, and our minds are trying to prevent us from failing.
Despite its dominating power over all of us, most people don't like to think about it or talk about it. Crazy, right? We'll have some expert guests discuss the "why we do this" in more scientifically-backed context, but the basic explanation is that for many of us it's scary AF, unpleasant, discouraging, embarrassing, paralyzing, distracting, depressing, and (READER insert their own negative words here). This is not good. Ignoring such a significant power in our world is not the right approach, as it lets the negativity perspective of this power have free reign within our lives.
We need to think about and talk about failure every day, because it's going to be there dominating powerfully regardless if we talk about it or not. A concept we learn as adults is that if there's a white elephant in the room, it's usually a negative distraction until we simply address it. Once we address it, the power and distraction is lessened or eliminated immediately, and we can get back to the business at hand.
DO NOT WORRY. There is really great news about the power of failure. Failure is for our benefit. Failure makes us better. Failure is essential in our growth, and is the key ingredient to success. Strange, isn't it? If the key ingredient to chocolate chip cookies is chocolate chips, we wouldn't try to make chocolate chip cookies by intentionally avoiding buying and using this ingredient. But most of us try to achieve success in our lives by ignoring the mere concept of failure. We have a big goal for this community: to tear down the stigma around failure. If we can simply start calling attention to the biggest white elephant in corner of our lives, it will immediately start to lose its distraction and negative power over us. But that's just the first step, and the step isn't easy for most. We are here to help. Your journey to take over the reigns of this power is significant, and must be initiated immediately in order to increase success levels in your life. Are you ready? Me too! Join us and let's do it together.
What does Fail Fast mean?
One might think "I don't want to fail fast. I want to avoid failure altogether." That's of course what we strive for when we set out to tackle a day. But no matter how lofty our aspirations or talent, we are going to fail.
- The best athletes in the world lose.
- The smartest business minds make bad decisions.
- The brightest scientists and doctors get it wrong.
- The best parents act like bad parents at times.
Failing fast is a business concept that stems from Agile methodology of project execution. We will continually discuss this concept within each show, but in the meantime there are many great explanations for this business concept online that that you can easily find. For introductory purposes, let's think about failing fast in terms of the above-stated fact that all of us will fail. We don't always know when the failure will come. Sometimes it's obvious like falling off a bike. Other times we don't see it even while it's happening. So knowing 100% that you will fail, would you rather know quickly that you're in the act of failing or keep plugging away for an unknown period of time?
Failing fast successfully requires a mentality that supports ACCEPTANCE AND EXPECTANCE of failure as a part of a success journey. The goal is to remain open-minded and objective when looking for and evaluating failure, and treat the learnings as a very valuable data source we will use to succeed or fail less in the future. This show was created to help those who might be afraid of failure, or deny when it happens, not ever see it when it happens, get discouraged when it happens, or even quit and run away prematurely before it happens.
This next sentence is the most important concept, and is the foundation on which all our learning here together will take place. You cannot avoid failure in this life no matter what you do. If you live a life trying to avoid failure, you will have 100% failed in not pursuing your potential. It's your choice on which failure you will choose: the failure experienced by trying, or the failure experienced by not trying.
Rising Vast to our potential
Rising Vast is our goal for each and every listener in this community. When failure and the challenges of this difficult life knock us to the ground, what do we do? Do we stay there? Do we crawl away? Do we stand back up slowly and with caution? Or do we rise up, greater and stronger than before, equipped with the armor and strategy supplied to us by previous failures and attack our potential?
Personal potential is unique to all of us, similar to our fingerprints, with one small difference: it is variable. Our fingerprints don't change, and that's why they're used for identification purposes. But our potential does change constantly based on all the factors of our current reality. The potential for a star athlete to get a scholarship is different at age 17 than it is at age 25, simply because universities don't typically operate that way. This athlete still has amazing potential, but it will be different and need to be discovered. A single mother of three small children is going to have a modified potential in some areas than she did before she had children. A career being away from home while traveling the world is likely no longer an option for her, but her path in the universe will have unlocked new potentials if she's looking for them. So learning how to maximize potential has to do with realistic evaluation of potential ranges plus a realistic evaluation of past failures to drive improved strategies and enhanced performance levels.
Rising Vast after failure to reach potential levels is not easy. It takes constant learning, outside support, tenacity, perseverance, optimism, forgiveness, humbleness, willingness, and many more "ness" words. Even though it can sometimes feel lonely during this journey, in reality we are not alone. The world is full of people who have been through similar difficult situations than we are in currently, and who are willing to help us rise vast after failing. Let's find them together and see what they have to share with us.