Failing Faster

" I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
Thomas A. Edison
(thanks to Mark Petticord for reminder
about this quote)

Have you ever really considered how much failing helps? 

Used with permission - www.blairballphotography.com

Not that anyone likes failing, BUT, we’re all going to fail. Right? If we aren’t failing we aren’t trying. Right?

I gave a talk on Monday that started with a quote from John Eldridge –  

“Most people go through life alert and oriented times 2 or 3.”   

That’s on a scale of 1-5; 2 is alive-unconscious, 3 is conscious-unaware...5 is FULLY ALIVE

My talk ended with “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you can do it well." That’s mine, or at least I claim it......I have no doubt I heard someone say it or I distorted something someone said to make it fit my philosophy!

Either way, I really want to live life alert and oriented times FIVE (fully aware) when I’m being creative, thinking about better ways to do things, following someone who has succeeded before me…trying to figure our HOW to do what they’re doing….

Jim Collins, in Good-to-Great, likened this to THE HEDGEHOG CONCEPT. Maybe I should say, this practice is my interpretation of the hedgehog concept.

Back to failing….there's a big difference between failing and being a failure.

It’s through failing, we grow, we become more. We can have more. Everything you've ever accomplished in your life, from what you're barely competent at to what you've mastered, it's all been accomplished by the process of failing.

As a baby, you learned to walk because you were persistent in failing at it. You learned to ride a bicycle because, because, you were persistent in failing at it.

I bet you’ve never accomplished anything of value without failing at it first. No one in history has…..no inventor, no discoveries, no medical cures,
NOTHING.

But you were NEVER a failure because of it. On the contrary, by being persistent in your failing at those activities…

…you became a master of them.

 What is it you want to do or do better?

Mastery comes to those who are willing to persistently fail. And yet the willingness to fail is one of the most difficult things for people to do.

To that end….be sure you do something today you don’t know how to do and fail at it.

And then fail it again, only faster. And again, faster and faster and faster.