Hopefully, you had a chance to read my quote of the week on the main page of the blog. I will update the quotes frequently, at the very least once per week. As you soon will learn, I love quotes and find a lot of solace from them. This quote seems to pair really well with my topic this week. “Don't be afraid to fail. Greatness lies in the vast space of uncertainty. Take a chance." -Richard Bronson. Here I go, taking a chance. Blog post #1, Go!
You have likely heard one rendition or another throughout your life stating that failing is an important factor in learning and growing. Yet, likely you and I both have chosen or will choose to not start something because we are afraid of failing. So why are we so afraid to fail? Well, getting out of our comfort zones is something we just don’t enjoy doing. We all get in our box, as I’ll refer to it, and as my daughter would say, ask for “space.” So how do we get out or stay out of the box?
I am lucky enough to have an amazing 2-year-old daughter who challenges me on a daily basis. Aliza is a super smart, sassy, loving, yet fierce 2 year old. She looks exactly like my wife, but as my wife kindly reminds me, she is a striking image of myself behavior wise, which I typically take offense to, but she teaches me important lessons daily. Which leads me to the topic for today’s blog; what our kids teach us, and recently, Aliza taught me a very important lesson.
Aliza started preschool in August of last year and she loves it. There are quite a few days where I feel like her chauffeur when I bring her to school. I drive her to school, she makes me carry her backpack and arrange her belongings in her basket as she runs into her room, leaving me in the hallway without a hug or an “I love you, daddy” before she’s gone. Now a little know fact about Aliza, she has a fiercely independent spirit, an amazing amount of determination and has what my wife would laugh at me stating, has “grit.” Aliza loves shoes. Every shoe and everything about them; the laces, the stripes, sparkles, the list could go on and on. As a father of a daughter who loves shoes and sparkles, I know I’m in trouble (this is where the apple doesn’t fall far from the mother tree).
Now, Aliza can take off her shoes without any difficulty, but Aliza can not actually put her shoes on, which causes some serious frustrations for my beloved two year old, especially when she wants her shoes back on that she JUST took off. Despite her frustration, Alisa didn’t stop trying. Just over a week ago Aliza’s teacher reported to us that Aliza takes off her shoes at school (no surprise to us) and lucky for her, her teachers decided if she is going to take them off at school she should take some time to figure out how to put them back on. I couldn’t be more supportive of this approach. Aliza worked through her frustrations and eventually got her shoes back on. She is totally stoked with herself and I am happy to report that she now can put her shoes on without any help; she conquered a typical 3-year-old skill at just over 2 years of age. You go, Aliza!
So, what can our kids teach us? To get out of the box. To fail and live in uncertainty to the point where we achieve greatness. This lesson hit me like a ton of bricks and helped inspire me to get my butt in gear to start living the life I want to live. Now don’t get me wrong, I fail all the time and try to learn from each failure, but where I don’t fail is where it really matters, pursuing my goals. As adults, we have lots of responsibilities, commitments and fully working brains that overthink everything. These tend to become obstacles and excuses as to why we don’t follow our dreams. We start to build our box. Two year olds don’t have responsibilities, commitments or a frontal lobe that is even close to fully developed. They know they want their way, they know what’s theirs and therefore they are literally goal achieving masters.
My advice to you is to get out of your box and start thinking like a two year old. Seems simple and it is, yet we all have something we haven’t taken the first step toward trying. If there is something you have been putting off starting, like maybe a blog, stop putting it off, and start trying. You’ll soon see that it is better to fail than to never start.