Risking Failure

Continuing on the topic of priorities, I was pondering "Just how important can things be?" By that I mean, "Just how important is 'important'?" How important are you willing to let high-priority things be?

Are you willing to stay up late and get up early to meet a deadline for your work? What about to help your child with a school project? Are you willing to go to bed early so you can get up early and exercise? Are you willing to be responsible about what you eat so that you can be in the physical condition you wish?

These are important questions, not because the answers to them will change your life, but rather because how you answer them helps you to learn about yourself.

The biggest indicator of importance is whether or not you are willing to risk failing. I have a specific meaning of failure, which is "to not achieve neither the original goals nor an acceptable subset of them, and to stop trying to achieve them."

I prefer this perspective because it highlights a few things.

• Something is a failure only if you deem it to be so.
• There are degrees in which something can succeed, if you are open to them.
• If you continually work towards your goal, then you really haven't failed. You simply haven't succeeded yet.
• Not succeeded is, therefore, not the same as failing.

Yes, there are precise and specific instances where a tightly defined goal yields a clear success/failure evaluation. Your team lost the basketball game is something one could consider a failure.

But isn't there a next game? What did you learn from this game? You really only get out of it what you put into it. And, nothing spectacular was ever created by accident by mediocre effort. (Go ahead, prove me wrong!)

If you are not willing to let this effort, this attempt, fail, then maybe the goal isn't large enough.

When I have to guarantee success, I scale back the deliverables to something I know I can achieve. While it is very satisfying to then achieve the stated goal, something is missing. The thrill of creating something significant really comes from extending oneself. For that, you have to be willing to fail. At least in this attempt.

At least that's the way I see it.

Thanks for reading!