Never Fail
Self-awareness and self-observation are the beginning of self-improvement. Being able to observe how you react in any given situation allows you to see the stories you tell yourself, your reasoning process and whether the response is an ingrained, habitual and automatic reaction or a chosen and deliberate response.
This ability has been life changing for me. I used to have an almost debilitating fear of failure. It was not obvious on the outside to the casual observer. On the surface I did a lot of different activities. The reality was that I so wanted to do any task well and created a daunting picture of a successful outcome in my head. I would then find myself reasoning that one way not to fail was not to start until I could do it perfectly. This flawed logic would become increasingly apparent as the deadline for the task approached. I would then rush the task, inevitably not doing it anywhere nearly as well as what I was capable of. It would feel like I had failed. This self fulfilling cycle then provided more fodder for the ‘voices in my head’ when the next big task presented itself.
Flipping through a magazine one morning I saw a beautiful leopard leaping high with the quote “I never fail. I either learn or I win.” This simple statement allowed me to reframe my internal dialogue, take on bigger tasks and start sooner. I was able to observe that in learning anything new there is the inevitable period of time where it “sucks”. The lack of skills, knowledge and experience means first attempts are flawed. You need to learn to embrace “the suck”. If you have ever learnt a new skill: cycling, driving, playing an instrument, photography, you know about the “sucky” period. That period of time where you feel incompetent, make lots of mistakes and wrestle with giving up. You likely also know that the more you practise the sooner you move from incompetence to feeling vaguely competent.
Personal change goes through a similar stretch space - sometimes it can require a leap, but I found that more often it’s like a seed growing. Like any seed, it needs nurturing and watering. When you are self-aware, you see what you are watering in yourself. Attention to a feeling in your brain is like water to a plant. Energy flows to where your focus goes. If you can choose what you focus on, you get more of what you focus on. So focus on what you want more of.
What do you need to focus more on? What change requires “embracing the suck”?
