Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Failure is alright.

Tags

Adapt, change, Creative, Errors, failing, Learning, Losing, Mistakes, Winning

I’ve written about failure many times before on this blog. I am addressing it again today because it is so important to achieving anything. I’m a huge video game fan. My current game is Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War. What a title right? It is a great game and tons of fun, particularly when my brother and nephew join in. Whenever I begin playing a new game, I alway screw up huge in the beginning. You are learning the game mechanics, the tips and tricks, the maps, the different modes of play, and so much more. If I quit playing because I fail to win a match here or there, I lose huge.

Playing the game is about winning and losing. If you win, it feels great. If you lose, it doesn’t feel so good, but that feeling motivates me to get out there and play another match. You see? We need failure so we can learn from past mistakes. We also need failure to remind us how good it feels to win. If you fail a bunch, and finally get a win, regardless of how small, it always feels awesome.

So get out there, folks! Get out there and put your best effort in. If you win–AWESOME. If you lose, figure out where you went wrong, and get back at it. The win is waiting for you.

I hope all of you have a terrific week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursdays – Setbacks

Tags

Determination, Failures, Goals, Improving, Investigating, Learning, Mistakes, Persistence, Setbacks, Teaching

Why are setbacks so helpful? Why am I grateful for them? I am grateful for setbacks because they are the best teachers. When you try something that you need to do to finish a goal, most of the time you do not know if it will work. So, you take a swing and miss. You learn what not to do, or you learn that you need to learn more about what you are trying to do. Without the setback, you wouldn’t learn something.

I don’t seek them out. I just try something and see if it works. If it doesn’t I begin the work of finding out what other people do, look for tutorials and things like this, practice a little bit, and then give it another shot.

Setbacks, failures, mistakes occur when we try to do something out of our comfort zone or skill set. I’m not talking about stubbing your toe, or dropping something by accident. I’m talking about trying something that you have never done before, but need to do, in order to accomplish something. One of my goals is to write a book, or even a few books. One thing I learned early on, is that I needed more information. So, I interact with other writers, I take courses, and I practice my writing every day. Setbacks, failures, and mistakes are not something to be afraid of.

So today, I’m grateful for setbacks. They have taught me how to do something better. They have helped me realize I don’t know how to do something. They guide me to changing something.

Have a great Thursday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – 5 Quotes

Tags

condemnation, Imagination, Love, Mistakes, Power

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

Carl Jung

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

Carl Jung

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.

Carl Jung

A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.

Carl Jung

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

Carl Jung

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Regret

Tags

Art, creativity, do it, failure, Get it done, Mistakes, Perfectionism, Procrastination, Regret

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

Sydney J. Harris

All of us have regrets of some sort. Minimize them by doing what you want to do and get to doing them. Act as if you could not fail, and you will avoid much regret in your life.

I used to be a huge procrastinator until I read some books that stated that the bulk of procrastination is caused by a fear of failure. Eliminate failure, and you’ve won half the battle.

The next contributor to procrastination is perfectionism. You say to yourself, “I want to do this thing, but it has to be perfect.” Then you delay and delay and delay some more. Why? Because you will never attain perfection. You will only achieve your best, and you know what your best is.

Take any art, be it book writing, drawing, anything that involves creativity. You decide when you’ve hit your best. You’ve decided when it is done. It doesn’t matter what other people say. You accomplished what you set out to do. And you know, the people that will like it are out there. But you have to get your creation out there for other people to notice.

When I first began blogging, I was so worried about what other people would think. Did I put enough time into that post? Are there any grammatical errors? Did I talk about the right topic? The answer: YES. Your readership likes what you are writing. They like what you talk about. They enjoy seeing what you’ve done.

Do everything as if you cannot fail, and don’t worry about what others think. I know that’s hard to do, but trust me. You’ll be much more productive and you’ll start knocking things off of your to-do list more quickly if you do the best you can, with what you have, be it time, resources, or any number of possible constraints.

You’ll feel better. You’ll feel more confident. You’ll enjoy what you are doing when you grant yourself the freedom to screw up.

Happy Wednesday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Frightful Things

Tags

failure, Feeling, Goal, Henry Ford, Law of Reversed Effort, Mistakes, Obstacles, Visualizations

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

Henry Ford

Have you ever attempted to do something you’ve never done before?

Initially, you’re excited. You are gang busters to get this new thing done. Then, reality hits. You start running into problems. You don’t know how to do this; you don’t know how to do that. Then you make a breakthrough, and you are motivated all over again. The cycle continues over and over until you finish.

Think about how many things you would like to do, but blow off because you are afraid you’ll fail. This is when Henry Ford’s quote comes into play. When you see failure before you begin, you will probably not do that thing. You figure, I’m going to screw it up, so why put in the effort.

Let me fill you in. You will always fail when you try something new. Why? Because it’s new. You can do some research to see where others have failed, but we are all creative. We’ll figure a way to screw up that no one else has figured out.

Here’s a technique you can use to achieve your next goal. Visualize what you want. See yourself complete it. Feel how you will feel when you’ve achieved the goal. The visualizing is more powerful when you can visualize how you will feel.

You see, we are wired to scan our environments for hazards. This is how our mind is built to ensure our survival as an organism. When we see obstacles to our goals, we worry, we get stressed out; we visualize what would happen if we hit one of those things. The negative visualization and the feelings we automatically associate with these visualizations are automatic.

To overcome these negative visions, we have to replace them with a vision of success and combine that vision with the feelings we will have when we complete our goal. This is all associated with the Law of Reversed Effort. When we reverse the way we look at things, we can achieve them. You see?

So here’s what you do. Whenever you get frustrated or stressed out over pursuing one of your goals, take a few minutes to close your eyes, visualize achieving the goal you’ve set for yourself, and add feeling to these visuals. You will immediately change your viewpoint and your body will react in kind, just like it does with the automatic negative feelings you generate without too much thought. This is how you take your mind off of the obstacles in your way and reset your sites on the achievement of your goal. Practice this. At first, you may not reap the benefits you are seeking. Keep at it. Once you develop this skill, you will no longer be plagued by the obstacles that are in your way and achieving goals will become easier and easier, despite the difficulty.

I hope this helps those of you who are struggling with self-defeating thoughts.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursday – Mistakes

Tags

Grateful, Mistakes, Perfectionism, Peter Drucker, Procrastination, Productivity, Thankful

People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.

Peter Drucker

Do you procrastinate? If so, one of the reasons may be that you are a perfectionist. A perfectionist wants everything to be perfect. They want their work areas to be perfectly set up, their project plans perfectly in place, their final product perfect. Guess what? These are all unattainable. Perfection will never happen–ever.

I used to be a perfectionist. It is a bad way to be. When I realized this, I began to look at how to get things done and not worry about the end result. There will always be something else you can do. There will always be another opportunity to improve. So give yourself a break. Get to work, make your mistakes, fix them, and get the job done.

When I stopped praying to the perfectionism gods, my life got a lot easier. I no longer worry about making mistakes. When I discover I made one, I fix it and move on. If the mistake is something I can avoid in the future, I note it, develop a mechanism to prevent it in the future, and get back to work.

If you are a perfectionist and want to escape the perfectionist-procrastination cycle you might want to check out this article by Web Standards Sherpa. I’ve read it and it’s pretty good. You’ll be amazed how freeing it is to just get to work and deal with the mistakes as they come.

Today, I’m thankful for leaving perfectionism behind.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Creativity

Tags

Brainstorming, Calm, creativity, decisions, Emotions, Freakout, Mistakes, Planning

“Creative people who cherish the gift of life often slip into the secret chambers of the creative mind. Their solutions are well-rounded, more sensible than those of people who rely solely upon reason as their mainstay. Gratitude unseals fountains of creativity, because a grateful person is relaxed. This allows him to take stock of his circumstances with an objective mind. A creative person often gets three-dimensional answers to his problems.” – Harold Klemp – The Language of Soul

Have you ever tried to solve a problem when you were emotional?

The emotional states, lock up our ability to tap into our intellect and creativity. Anger, fear, sorrow, or any number of emotions will circumvent our creativity and ability to think through a problem to its successful conclusion.

How do you fix this? Patience. Emotions pass. Relax. Brainstorm possible solutions in a non-judging way. After you’ve calmed down a bit and your emotions have subsided, you can now evaluate these solutions and pick the one that makes the most sense. Then you’ll have to decide all the steps that get you from where you are to the final solution you decided upon. Then, you’ll put the steps in logical order and determine how long each step will take. Then it’s nothing more than working through the steps.

Trust me. I’ve been in situations when I’ve been emotional and made the mistake of jumping to a conclusion. This mistake leads to more decisions and the whole thing will spiral out of control. You literally create more problems than you started with–all because you didn’t take the time to calm down and plan with a clear head.

I hope all of you have a terrific Saturday! I’m stoked that it’s November. This is my favorite time of year.

 

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Fear of Failure

Tags

Accomplishment, failure, Fear, Frank Herbert, Mistakes, motivation, Overcoming Fear

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”―Frank Herbert,Dune

Fear. It causes us to pause, to procrastinate, to react to all those hidden demons our minds create. Fear warns us that we are not good enough. Fear predicts our total ruin. Fear predicts the destruction of our reputation. Fear is an enemy to be dealt with if you are going to do anything meaningful with your life.

We all deal with fear in one way or another. Fear can come in many guises. We can be fearful of a confrontation with a colleague or a loved one. We can be fearful of failure. We can be fearful of standing up for ourselves. We can be fearful of moving forward with a project we really want to accomplish.

I have found that the best way to conquer fear is to eliminate the ego. How many wars or arguments could have been avoided if both parties put their egos to the side. The ego is something you’ll never get rid of, but it can be put to the side. When you are creating something new, you will make mistakes. Embrace mistakes. Embrace failure. These are two things you have to get through if you are going to achieve anything. If you avoid assigning failures and mistakes to yourself personally, you will feel bad, upset, angry, etc. Instead, play a game. Laugh at yourself. Realize what you’ve learned. Look at the failure or mistake and dissect it. How did it happen? What did I miss? More importantly, how can I avoid this mistake in the future?

Set your goals, establish a plan to achieve the goals you have set, and stake out actions to move you through your road map. Make your daily contributions so minuscule that you’ll do them without resistance. You’ll make mistakes. You will discover your plan has problems and needs to be adjusted. Failure occurs only when you fail to act or give up on your goals and dreams. Keep this in the forefront of your mind—failure occurs when you quit. You avoid failure if you keep moving forward.

I had a heck of a time yesterday with my Dad watching the Superbowl. We were a little disappointed in the game. The commercials were OK, but not barn burners. The game was exciting toward the end, but the first half was boring. In the end, however, it was nice watching the game with my Dad.

Tomorrow is the State of the Union and I’ll be engaged with that most of the day. This week I’ll continue my reading, writing, exercise, meditation, and learning schedule. I interact with a lot of authors online and discovered a great writing tool. It’s called Scrivener. I just downloaded it today and will be working through tutorials and such for most of the week. Once I’ve got a good idea of how to use the tool, I’ll begin moving my book to it. I discovered that using a word document straight up is probably not the most efficient way of putting together a book, particularly now that I am in the re-write phase of the operation.

That’s it for today folks. Have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Funny Friday

Tags

Albert Einstein, failing, Falling, goofs, Improving, Learning, Mistakes, Programming

“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.” ­Albert Einstein

Only Albert could give us something to ponder while being funny. This brought up a point about the importance of giving yourself a break. You are human. You will make mistakes. You will goof up. You will fall.

Will your mistake end the world? Will your goof destroy your progress? No. You can fix mistakes and goofs. Just realize that making mistakes and goofs are all part of the learning process. Learn from your mistakes. Learn what didn’t work. Learn why it didn’t work.

After re-wiring my brain toward coding again, I realized how silly some mistakes are. Software development languages are quite unforgiving when you screw up syntax. They are also maddening when you think they should do something, and they do something else. Between syntax and logic errors, logic errors are the worst. But, like every other developer before me, there are little hacks to learn, little “tricks of the trade” that allow you to avoid plenty of errors or have a process for finding logic and syntax errors.

The same thing that a software engineer uses can be used in real life when looking at your other projects. Look at the big task, break it down into little tasks, and execute each little task. This is what a computer programmer does because a computer can only work through little tasks to accomplish bigger ones. You must build the code, so your computer knows the variables it will have access to, the functions it will execute, and told when to execute a function or line of code. All these little tasks build up to an end goal, like allowing a person to play a game, do a calculation, or learn if they had enough sleep last week.

We do the same thing when we are looking to accomplish something. We look at the goal. We visualize what the end-state of that goal’s accomplishment looks like. Then we begin breaking the goal down into actionable steps.

I’ve really enjoyed getting back into programming. I haven’t done it seriously since 2005, but it is all beginning to come back quickly. I like the way software engineering requires us to think about what we want to accomplish. Only then can we build code to help us fulfill our desired end.

When you make a mistake and get down on yourself, take some time to contemplate the bigger picture. Each mistake you make helps you move forward—you find out what NOT to do. Learn from these mistakes. They’ll make you stronger—better. I hope all of my readers in the US had a terrific Thanksgiving!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday

Tags

Consistency, failure, Mistakes, Perseverance, Persistence, Planning

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett

I like quotes like these because they truly reflect reality. There is nothing that you will do in life that will not result in mistakes. Mistakes are what makes us human. If we fear to make mistakes we will never accomplish anything. Those of us that accomplish a lot also fail a lot. Those of us that accomplish a lot are not afraid of making mistakes.

The lesson: Make mistakes. Make many mistakes. Continue pushing forward and make more mistakes. If 10 mistakes result in achieving something—make them and achieve.

Take some time today and look at some of the goals you have set for yourself. Which ones have you put off? I bet there’s a little fear inside of you telling you that you are not good enough, you don’t have the right skills to do that, or you don’t know where to start.

Today, I challenge you to grab one of those goals and think about what your life looks like when you achieve it. Then, once you know where you want to be, put together a rough plan. Don’t do anything else, just put together a plan.

Tomorrow, look at that plan and flesh it out a bit. Get some specifics in place. Set a few milestones (deadlines) for those specific actions you have created for yourself.

On Friday take one of those initial actions and do it. On Saturday look at your plan and schedule execution on another one of your action steps to be finished next week. Try this out. You’ll find that once you’re moving on these action steps you’ll begin to feel better and better about achieving your goal.

One of my major goals is to lose weight. I’m down 28 pounds so far. When I started, I went through the same actions above. Has my weight loss been consistent? Has it been perfect? No, to both questions. I have had to continue to adjust, realize I made some mistakes, fix them, and get back on track.

When you are looking to lose weight, you must do one thing: create a calorie deficit. We analyze what we are currently eating by monitoring our food intake for a week. We don’t adjust yet. We just write down what we are eating every day. Then, once you’ve done this for the week, you know what you are currently eating (calories, carbohydrates, fats, proteins). Then we adjust. I’m at 2300 calories per week, but do not hit that calorie goal every day. I lose about a pound a week. That’s all I want to lose. I’m not in a rush, I want to keep off whatever I take off.

My plan:

• Collect food intake
• Determine total calories consumed each week by macro (Carbs, Fats, Proteins)
• Then reduce the calories by 500 (3500 calories in 1 pound of body weight)
• Stick to the new calorie goals

Assumptions:

• This is not an exact science
• My body will react differently over time as it adapts to the diet
• I will need to adjust as I go, but the adjustments need to be gradual and consistent

You see how simple this is? You can do it too. You just need to take a little time to create a plan, break the plan out into actionable steps, and execute each step. You’ll get there—I promise.

If you are stuck and still don’t know what to do, feel free to reach out. I like helping people with achieving their goals. Simply reply in the comments and tell me how to contact you. I’m not looking to make money here, just help others to achieve what they want to achieve.

Making mistakes is part of being human. Make them. Fix them. Move forward.

Until next time…

Dave