My dad likes to quote one of my nephews as saying “that not work”. It’s a pretty adorable toddler thing to say and also kind of funny as an inside joke quote. Now it’s my turn.
I tried doing blogging when I got home from work, but when I get home tired at 11pm to a wife that hasn’t seen me all day and wants to talk, it’s really not easy to focus on writing something. We’ll figure it out, because I’m really enjoying writing. But as you can tell from the timing, this isn’t going to work super well. (I had been writing the day before, but that one day buffer disappeared the moment I tried moving to night writing.)
That not work.
I once attended a workshop at an IT conference (Spiceworld to be exact) with an improv group. One of the things they taught that has stuck with me was the importance of owning your failures. They had the audience participants who messed up stand up, take a bow, and declare to everyone “I failed!”
Guys, it’s a surprisingly great feeling. It somehow removes the shame from failure. I don’t know how. Maybe it’s because nobody can shame you for something you are owning proudly? IDK. But it works, and I use it. Now that I’m talking about it, I’ll have to use it more.
But I think using it is super important. If failure is something that is terrifying or shameful to you, you will avoid it. If you avoid opportunities where you might fail, you’ll avoid any risks, which means you’ll avoid doing anything new or big or scary. And if you don’t do those, you’ll never grow, and you’ll never see big successes. And heaven knows the world needs more people growing and having big successes.
So ty it next time you mess up. Stand up, take a bow, and say “I failed.” Or just laugh and own it if you prefer. Any way you do it, stop making failure a shameful thing.
I failed guys. I didn’t manage to get a blog post every day (by the clock), and more importantly I failed to accurately assess time requirements and manage my schedule.
But we can try to do better, because that’s the only thing we really can do.