Daniel Roach.Org

Failure is funny. It likes to masquerade. One of the biggest reasons for ?failure? isn’t really failure at all. So many people wallow in their failure, when the truth is that they made no attempt at all. They haven’t failed at anything, they haven’t done anything at which they could possibly fail. We’ve got a lot of names for this sort of behavior. We call it laziness in some cases, busyness in others. We use catchy phrases like performance anxiety, stage fright and analysis paralysis to label our inactivity but we never dig deeper to find out why it happens. I see it all the time, people who come up with brilliantly clever ideas, ideas that could change their life. The spark of creation flares for one brief and glorious moment against the backdrop of their usual darkness before it fizzles out, unused, unappreciated. These people tend to say things like, ?wow, that’s a great idea,? or ?that could make some real money.? And while all of that may be true, their ideas go nowhere and our hero’s/heroine’s lives remain the same, as if it never occurred.

Why to we do it? Why do stare down the barrel of something that we know could be great, only to run from it before we even try? Why do we look our answers, our perfect solutions, directly in the eye, only to watch it pass us by all the while wondering why our problems haven’t resolved themselves yet? Why? We do it because we’re too afraid of messing things up and getting our hands dirty. Sure, maybe laziness has something to do with it, but mostly it’s just the fear of not getting it right on the first try. Our overwhelming need to make our vision perfect deters us from ever making it at all. We would all be more productive, we would all have more to show for our time if we just gave ourselves permission to suck at life for a little while.

The Sheer Joy and Magnificent Splendor That is the Do-Over

Ever notice how it’s hard to be at your best when other people are watching your every move? It’s happened to all of us, the pressure gets to much, you choke. Suddenly you find all eyes on you and everyone is expecting something spectacular that you could’ve delivered if they weren’t staring quite so much. Ever had someone say the words ?be funny? to you in a crowd of people? That’s the sensation I’m talking about. There is certainly no shame in it, but this is precisely the reason that most people never try. Most of the great ideas that have ever come about require at least some form of public approval. This is where everything goes to pot. As soon as most people realize that their idea is likely to be scrutinized by any number of people, they start to choke. If only we remembered what we learned when we were kids . . . or golfers.

Remember when you were playing baseball out in the yard as a kid? If you don’t, just play along. You’d get up to bat, swing as hard as you could, all the while praying your little heart out for a crowd-stopping home run. The ball connected with a wonderful crack and promptly veered into the trees. In the major leagues this is called a foul, in the childhood baseball league everyone just yelled ?do-over!? retrieved the ball and took it one more time from the top. And don’t think that adult players don’t do this too. Ever hear of a golfer who took a mulligan? A mulligan is the golf version of a do-over. Or how many times have you seen a golfer swing, miss and say something along the lines of ?that was a practice swing?? It happens all the time and if we let it happen a little more often in our professional lives, we’d be able to create more and better work.

?If you’ve got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you are learning to say it better.?

–David Mamet, True and False

The Sheer Horror and Magnificent Terror That is Creation

Every time I sit down to write, be it for this site or for outside projects, I automatically psych myself out. You can tell when it happens too, because those are the posts that read like a Marsha Norman play. Sometimes it gets the better of me and what comes out onto the paper makes me wonder why I even touch a keyboard. I’ve gone through days of this before. I’ll sit down and write and delete the same sentence ten or twenty times before calling it a lost cause. That is until I began to give myself the permission to write absolute crap. I told myself that all I had to do was write. I knew what I wanted to say, just say it and see what happens. If it sucks, no one has to know and at least you’ll have something you can work with for a second draft. Let’s face it, this is the whole reason we have first drafts to begin with. This seemed logical, so I tried writing with this in mind. I told myself, ?It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to be good.? And you know what? It works.

Creation of any kind is hard. No artist wants to tangle with a blank canvas. No writer wanted to tap dance with a white page. Nature hates a void and so do creators. We want to fill it, but nothing ever seems good enough. This is why ideas that seem so perfect are left to die. We fill them with too much importance and assume that we will never be able to live up to our own expectations. If we just give ourself the permission to completely screw it up the first time, it won’t seem so bad when we get to fix our mistakes during round two.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part . . . Next to Actually Starting

How many times have you put off that certain project you wanted to start because you decided you didn’t know enough about it to begin? How many times have you decided that you needed to brainstorm more, or learn more, or read more before you got going on it? If you’re like most people, you’ve committed this sin more than a few times and it’s an easy mistake to make. We tell ourselves that the reason we’re waiting is so that we may do a better job later down the road. What we really mean to say is that if we don’t look at it, it will go away because the notion of actually having to put form to our thought scares the crap out of us. We hesitate and make excuses like, ?I need to check my email one more time.? If you’ve ever wondered where procrastination comes from, it’s fear.

I’ve always wondered why it took me and many other Americans so long to start exercising and eating correctly. We all looked at ourselves and knew we had a weight problem, knew how to fix it, but always put it off until another day. Diet and exercise work every time, but we’ll get to it tomorrow. We wanted the change, we were foaming at the mouth for the change, but the answer we found wasn’t the answer that we wanted. We had the sure-fire, never-failed-yet answer to our prayers and yet we didn’t take it. This is why, it was the fear of doing it wrong, the fear of eating the food you didn’t want to eat, lifting heavy things and ultimately finding out that it didn’t work. Has it ever failed before? No. Has it failed me? No. It was an irrational fear, but then most fears are.

Grant Yourself a Screw Up and Take It

When it comes time to start your new project, your new business, your new exercise program, whatever it may be, give yourself the permission to completely bollox it up the first time around. Remind yourself that no one is looking at that particular moment and they never will until you are completely satisfied. Remind yourself that there is plenty of room for error and even just aimless wandering. Let it flow however it likes and if it turns out to be crap, throw it out and start over. No harm, no foul and now you know what not to do. Unless you’re a sky diver, there is no reason to get it right on the first try. If you are a sky diver then mulligans are not for you but perhaps we can interest you in some of the articles below: