100 Fails

How many times have you failed this week?

I don't mean how many things you didn't do. I mean how many times you took a real shot, created a result, and didn't get the outcome you wanted.

If the answer is none, you may be protecting yourself from the very experience that helps you discover what you can create.

Failure is an experience of a thought and feeling combination. It is subjective. We make it mean something in our brains.

And yet the fear of it stops so many of us from accessing our creativity, ideas, and human ingenuity.

Perfection keeps your life small

If you only want to act when the result will make you look good, earn approval, or make money, you stop yourself from producing results.

It is easy to keep succeeding when you stay inside what you already know how to do. You meet familiar expectations and keep telling yourself you are a winner.

But you are winning inside a limited life. You rinse and repeat what is comfortable instead of making progress toward something new.

When you are willing to fail, you learn at a much higher rate than when you insist on succeeding every time.

That willingness requires knowing how to monitor your mind and process your emotions. It lets you attempt what you would otherwise avoid.

Count results, not activity

I can often tell which students will succeed by looking at who is producing the most results.

Not the most successes. The most results.

They win, lose, and keep doing it. They put themselves in situations where a real outcome is possible.

Busyness isn't the same thing. Neither is doing something that requires no risk.

For a life coach, telling someone you are a coach is different from offering to help them solve a problem and asking whether they would like to hire you.

The first can leave you waiting. The second produces a yes or a no.

Posting on social media or sending an email isn't automatically the result I am talking about. Did you make an offer? Did someone say yes or no? Did you try to sell the value you created?

Count those answers.

Use your own brain

You try something and it doesn't work. You try something else and it doesn't work. Eventually you have to ask what to try next.

That is when you access your brain in a way you wouldn't if someone always handed you the answer.

You can follow a process and still try new, different, harder, or bigger ways. Your contribution isn't just executing someone else's ideas. It includes discovering your own.

I tell my team that if a meeting consists only of everyone asking me questions, we are missing out. With four assistants and me, there are five brains available. If we use only mine, we lose their ideas.

I want to know what they think the answers are and what they want to do.

The same is true for you. What solutions are in your brain that nobody has accessed yet?

When each of us does that work, we can learn from one another's ideas instead of all relying on one person's thinking.

Make room for a hundred attempts

The Possibility Formula includes failing a hundred times.

If you expect one prescribed path to work, you may quit when it doesn't. Someone tells you how, you try it, and you conclude the goal isn't for you.

But if you make room to figure out the how by doing, the first unsuccessful attempt isn't the end. It is attempt one of a hundred.

When you eventually find three things that work, you may have a hundred that didn't. Those attempts help you create a combination, process, or path that wasn't there before.

You will know exactly how you did something once you have done it, not before.

Keep progressing. Don't run in place. Try something, learn from the result, and move forward.

Take off the confusion blanket

Confusion can protect you from risking failure.

You tell yourself you don't know what to do and need someone to tell you. You stay wrapped in that confusion instead of going into the world.

You can choose differently. Instead of waiting to know how, decide what you are going to try now.

Taking off that blanket can feel exposing. You may feel afraid, doubtful, and frustrated. That doesn't mean you are doing it wrong.

Discomfort is the currency of your dreams. Figuring something out asks you to keep going while you feel uncertain.

If a potential client says no, ask what you can learn. Did you demonstrate the value? How could you have done it better?

That question gives your brain another opportunity to work.

Don't let success stop the learning

Once you start failing more, you will also start winning. You become stronger, more knowledgeable, and more confident because you give yourself a chance to succeed.

Then success can become tempting. You like winning and don't want to return to the things that might fail.

Be careful with that.

Even with the success I have created, I still have to put myself in situations that are scary and challenging. I still want to grow and access the deeper answers in my brain.

Don't make your goal avoiding losses. Make it producing results and learning from them.

Take your shot. Count the yeses and the nos. Keep trying until you discover what only you can create.