The road to success is filled with failure and a lot of exits to go anywhere but.
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Tag: failure
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Get Better
Last night I failed an audition.
Wasn’t soul crushing – I didn’t panic,blame other people, or decide to punish the world – all I could think is I have to get better.
Maybe that is the point. Hopefully I can return to this post when things don’t go my way and remember.
The point of it all is to get better.
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My Work Habits – Building a Computer
I have been working on building a computer.
I haven’t partaken in the task for years, and considering the headache I have received while doing it, a more relaxed person shouldn’t go ahead and do this undertaking.
It has been a comedy of errors – lost parts, unplugged switches, and phone calls to support.
Through that though, I have discovered a little bit more about myself, and about my work habits.
A few notes:
1 – Calling support will get you more help immediately, but emailing support may get you more depth.
Both give you some more understanding, but calling will get things done a lot quicker. Picking up the phone moves things a long.
2 – Mess takes away from success.
I worked in a dirty room, and my mind felt frazzled. A clean room gave me a little more peace of mind to get working and start making something happen.
3 – Coffee and Red Bulls are friends when used sparingly
I have abstained from caffeine lately. No particular reason – but I found myself just stopping.
I had a cup of coffee yesterday and it sprung my brain into action – unlike I have had in a while. It is a drug and once you remove your tolerance, it works as originally intended.
Hopefully I can move forward and get this done ( I still have a few more things to do, but I am close ) but I will say as frustrating as this has been, I do feel better about myself and I have learned a bit more.
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Failure and Success – True Balance
Not all failure is bad.
Not all success is good.
It is easy to succeed into mediocrity – no risks lead to little reward, a pat on the head, and a resting place in that cubicle.
It is hard to talk yourself into failure – there is a lot of questions – a lot of what if? Who wants to be fired?
I think the most successful of us all know that the key to exceptional-ism is to fail into success. Take those chances and stretch out into the breach.
I’m sick
Coughing sneezing and my throat is seizing up quite nicely.
On top of that, I had an audition yesterday, which i tanked – more or less because my stage presence wasn’t there.
The booker said my writing was fine – I just had my hands in my pockets and couldn’t keep my head up. These are things i stopped doing months ago – but through my cold, I fell back on old habits because they felt safe.
This resulted in my failure.
Failure has been a boon to my depression. It has been waiting for an opportunity to rear its head.
Even so, as I wake up now, home from work, I just breathe. I want to work with it. Use it as fuel to keep me pushing.
I see this as an opportunity to live and let die. Failure is just be feedback.
And I bet I never put my hands in my pockets again.
Further Reading
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Pushing The Plateau
We sit around and prepare ourselves to hurry up and wait. There is hanging silence in the room. What is the next move?
How do I get better?
The Plateau Effect hits every creative.
Basically – you have worked yourself into mediocrity. You have done a good job of it too. The next level isn’t so processed. You have to wonder – what makes you go from decent to good to great.
A lot of it is grit. Sometimes you have to ask yourself – Are you willing to push on?
But it isn’t as simple as pushing – you have to objectify yourself. Take yourself out of your work. Be your own best critic instead of your worst. Be in a rush to find your flaws – but be ready to fix them, don’t wallow.
There is a resistance that wants to keep you where you are. It is a lot of work, but those who can see the big picture – those people are the ones who end up on the marquee.
Further Reading
The War of Art
[Steven Pressfield] (http://www.stevenpressfield.com/)
[The Plateau Effect] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Plateau-Effect-Getting-ebook/dp/B009VMBNQ8/ref=tmm_kin_title_0_)
[Farnam Street] (http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2013/06/whats-the-biggest-barrier-to-accomplishing-great-things/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+68131+%28Farnam+Street%29)
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Crash Course
Sometimes you crash land.
You find yourself in a place where nothing is familiar. It maybe hard to breathe. It may be hard to think.
Your mind can become your enemy or your friend during this process.
We would all like to think we would become an action hero – running through the situation guns blazing – but that just isn’t accurate.
You have to train yourself to get to that point. No one runs the marathon the first time through – you build your endurance through controlled tests in the dark.
Working in the dark is a blessing because it allows no pressure failure. You build your risk levels, you train yourself to see how much you can stomach. Small leaps of faith to build bridges to success.
So, it is quite simple – to become the action hero – just get used to darkness. The light will shine on you eventually.
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Fortune Favors the Bold
It pays to take chances.
As a matter of fact, lately, it seems like it’s the only way to go.
Where things stand now, in this economy, people seem to do more meaningful and purposeful work when they go small, take on the start-up, or start their own business.
The time of working 40 years at your job, and getting the gold watch have come and gone.
No longer will you be able to look across the table at your retirement party and guess when the rest of your team will join you on the golf course.
The benefit? We live in an era where information is almost free, and opportunity can be boundless if you go for it.
Fortune favors the bold.
*Further Reading
[James Aluchter] (http://www.jamesaltucher.com/)
[Choose Yourself] (http://www.amazon.com/Choose-Yourself-ebook/dp/B00CO8D3G4)
[Chris Guillebeau] (http://chrisguillebeau.com/)
[Tim Ferriss] (http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/)
*
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The Toolkit
There is no way to sugar coat it – failure is frustrating.
We have all run into that issue where success feels a mile away.
You fail, you turn around and try something else and you fail, you use a different medium and you fail.
There is no going back, you have already crossed the Rubicon. No fall back. It is either success, or nothing.
The entire thing feels like a lesson in failure and frustration.
But finally, you get it. We see success, it is finally within your grasp – and we forget what it took for us to get there.
When we see the next problem – we dismiss the tools we gathered on the last go around. We start from scratch.
This is the true failure.
The best thinkers use failure to build their tool shed. I feel like I should do the same.
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Building Blocks
Learning the building blocks of success.
Being an entrepreneur is a road to success, and it is one that can be extremely narrow but insanely satisfying.
It satisfies a creative itch. No safety net means deal or die.
The interesting part about that road is it looks incredibly inviting when you first look – set your own hours, be your own boss, do what you want.
Once you are on it, you see what makes that road narrow, like laziness, mindlessness, no discipline, that make people stop and turn around.
Even with that said, you are more than likely going to fail – but the building blocks with learned failure give you the chance to go back and try again with the road a little wider.
A great theme for any decade.
From the desk of Adam Thomas 