The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 27 Degrees – 9:04 a.m.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but MOST of the things I do and try don’t work…at least not at first. Sometimes, they never work!
At some point in my past, I reached a point where I had to figure out how to deal with “what doesn’t work.”
My options were:
- go crazy
- redefine my relationship with “what doesn’t work”
Going crazy seemed messy, so I chose option two.
Being the straight A student means I had a pretty set relationship with “what doesn’t work.”
I was to avoid it at all costs! And if I did accidentally meet up with it, I was trained to run the other way!
In the system, when you do things that don’t work, you get punished.
In the real world of the independent human, when you do things that don’t work, you do more things.
Ultimately, I dropped the story we’re all taught to have around “what doesn’t work.” We’re told that’s bad, we’re told that’s a sign of failure, we’re told that’s a commentary on our ability to find WHAT WORKS.
But someone just made all this up and then fed that program to your brain.
Take someone like the magician David Copperfield. At the link below you’ll see an interesting scene from an interview he did with Kevin Rose.
In the event you’re not up on Mr. Copperfield, he’s currently performing in Vegas, doing 11 week runs, 15 shows per week, with zero days off during those 11 weeks.
The hard work isn’t the point. The point is his relationship with “what doesn’t work.”
You’ll hear him talk about it in the interview here. Notice the part where he mentions he’ll work through something that “doesn’t work” for two full years.
Two years of “not working!” Luckily, I’ve never experienced that long of an issue.
So that either makes me look like a complete genius OR it proves I’m aiming way too low.
Either way, think about what you hear him say.
When you give up the story around “what doesn’t work,” you’re more free to explore solutions that do work.