This past weekend, I was listening to my favorite podcast, Armchair Expert, and the interview being conducted was with Ed Sheeran. During the podcast, I was struck by two things. The first was that Ed Sheeran is a pretty serious guy. That was not something I was expecting because he comes across as an affable guy who writes and records some pretty catchy pop music. The other takeaway from the interview was his discussion with Dax Shepard about the topic of failure, or more specifically, daring to suck. Without listening to the entire podcast, I can summarize the conversation into a couple of key talking points.
1. People really don't learn anything from their accomplishments.
2. You have to put yourself out there and try new things if you hope to learn and grow.
I realize that this summary is woefully inadequate, but nonetheless, the points are true. Nothing is gained by staying in a comfort zone because you have to stretch yourself and put yourself at risk of failure if you really want to grow as a human being. It's a risky endeavor because your ego can be bruised, but in the end, you will learn more from a failure than you will from an accomplishment.
I've written before about Lessons Learned from Failure, but what I didn't discuss was the intestinal fortitude that it takes to put yourself out there in the first place. You have to be pretty confident in your abilities to take on something that you might fail at. I think that most people step outside of their comfort zones if they feel like they have a reasonable chance to succeed. Very rarely do you see someone taking on a challenge that they know they are going to fail at. If that was the case, there would be no reason to write this blog at all. Keeping this in mind, it is my assertion that most people only put themselves out there if they feel like there is a really good chance that they won't end up with egg on their face. The problem with this line of thinking is that some really cool things may not happen because people are too concerned about how it might look to others if they fail.
Daring to suck is embracing the possibility that you will fail and aren't concerned about how it will make you look. Instead, you are more concerned about your growth potential and what possibilities lie ahead if you happen to not succeed. You aren't afraid of failure, but rather, you acknowledge from the outset that you are willing to risk failure because your ultimate outcome will be a win. You will either succeed or you will learn what went wrong so you can improve in the future. It's a scary premise, but those who are willing to accept the dare to suck have the potential for great things in the future.
Not everyone is ready to accept the challenge. At the end of the day, it is always about readiness to learn. If you aren't ready, you probably should not make the attempt, but you should ask yourself when you will be ready. Yes, you may fail miserably and have to deal with the fallout of it, but you can at least look at yourself in the mirror and know that you made the attempt. At the end of the day though, you can stand tall knowing that you are daring to suck and that is a lesson that not too many people are willing to learn.
#FORWARD #FORGE
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