Day 60: 1 Thing – The Dojo

Hello beautiful people!

Let’s make mistakes!

Ironically enough, in putting up vids for this course curriculum, today’s vid originally went up with the wrong title and therefore was showcased on the wrong day. It’s fixed now, as all tech woes of that level are fixable once the human manning the machine(s) knows about the problem. But for a while, it was broken.

The system failed. The course was ruined. My reputation took an irretrievable hit as thousands of ninjas took to the streets carrying flaming pitchforks, chanting “YOU SUCK” and driving me out of town, crying, penniless and alone, a complete and utter failure due to my incompetence in double-checking a line of code.

Click to enbiggen.Of course, that’s not at all what happened, but if you listen to your lying mind about the stakes when it comes to EVER getting something wrong, that’s how it feels.

And that’s a problem. Because it’s just a lie. And the more we believe in lies, the harder we make things for ourselves. Why would we choose to do such a thing? Often because we were never taught it’s safe — and expected — to fail.

How’s about we engage in a little creative reparenting?

TRANSCRIPT HERE

By coming at mistakes from a place of curiosity, with a sense of adventure, having pre-forgiven ourselves for what we’re going to get wrong, we open up all sorts of opportunities for creativity and joy in our lives.

In fact, we can begin to rewire ourselves to be more adaptable! We can actually train our brains to see more opportunities for growth rather than identifying challenges as obstacles at all!

Click to enbiggen.What would be different about you — and about your pursuit of a creative career altogether — if you gave yourself more permission to fail, more room to be curious about what your mistakes might teach you, more focus on the fun of finding out what your first eff-up of each day will be?

Think about the space the fear of “What if I get it wrong?” currently takes up inside you. If you could draw a map of your mind and plot out real estate for each of the activities your brain currently and regularly engages in, how much of your map would be filled with the murky waters you’d label “fear of getting it wrong”?

Ooh… hold up! Let’s make that part of today’s work!

But first, an inspiring manifesto.

Click to enbiggen.Okay. Now, about today’s work: Think about ways in which you can approach making mistakes differently than before. We KNOW we’re gonna make mistakes. We always have. We always will. How’s about we start looking into the possibility that the stress we feel is about fear of making mistakes rather than about any of the actual consequences of making mistakes. Whether you draw out a map of your mind — labeling sections for each of the major activities in which you engage — or not, I want you to begin considering that the real time-suck, energy-suck, productivity-suck, creativity-suck of life could actually be something as simple as the anxiety we choose to carry around about things that aren’t that big a deal at all.

Click to enbiggen.Share how you can be gentler with yourself when it comes to making mistakes. If you feared no failure would you get around to submitting your materials to your target buyers? If you feared no failure would you finally attempt hitting that networking function you keep putting off? If you feared no failure would you make the big move? If you feared no failure would you speak confidently when asked why you’d be a good fit for the agent of your dreams? If you feared no failure WHAT COULD YOU ACHIEVE?

Yes, this is a cousin to how you’d behave if you knew you were the best in the world at what you do (Day 15). Yes, you can choose to clock in for the fear of making mistakes if eliminating it altogether feels like too much right now (Day 33). And yes, at its core, this is all part of trusting you’re enough (Day 3). Probably everything in this course is, really.

We come at some of the same things in several different ways and from several different directions to create sustainable change in the key structural places that fortify what you’re building toward (that next-tier you) for the long-haul.

And sometimes we get stuff wrong. Beautifully, humanly wrong. As Keith brilliantly says, “The true beauty of humanity is in its flaws, not its perfection.” (Tweet it.) The next time you mess up, stop, breathe, and say, “That’s me being beautifully human.”

Man, that’s good stuff!

’til tomorrow… stay ninja!

Bon Sig