In sport and in business, there is a consistent pattern that keeps people from success.
It is this: Expecting perfection too early.
It is self sabotaging, like cutting a head off the Hydra. It only leads to more frustration, more problems. Always expect failure at beginnings.
In doing anything difficult, we fail consistently at the beginning. We must not get disappointed in this failure. The difficulty in doing something worthwhile reward itself. Most people get frustrated when things don’t work out the way they planned. Learn to accept imperfection in yourself and keep working.
Don’t expect to look cool
It’s an incredible thing, watching someone learn how to skateboard. They’ll sit there and try, the board will spin, and go flying away from underneath them. They will look like a complete idiot. And it is at this point you can tell whether or not someone will become adept.
If they become self conscious about looking like a fool, it’s over. If they can laugh at themselves, they will at least learn to ollie.
But do it anyway
The best way for humans to learn is by doing. And failing, constantly. Entrepreneurs do not strike it rich on their first project. Instead, they fail again and again, until finally they almost accidentally succeed.
In the meantime, the failure teaches them how to laugh at themselves, and to not take the world so seriously. And eventually they become indifferent to the outcome of their work. Fail or succeed, they could care less.
Eventually, results won’t matter
Life becomes about the practice itself. Of attempting new and difficult things all the time. And it matters less and less, what is success and what is failure. It all turns into a game of play.
My business is this way now. A year ago I was making less than $10 an hour at Whole Foods. I never thought I’d be able to charge $60 an hour. But in one year, I have grown enormously, failed enormously, and along the way become indifferent to the success or failure of my business. I merely work and produce, and leave things at that. I am not attached to winning, becoming the biggest business, or losing it all. I’d much rather enjoy contributing whatever it is I decide to give.
That’s when the best results come
Some days that’s hanging out with kids and teaching them how to skate, and others it’s building web software, and still others it’s just sitting in a quiet room writing. No matter what I create, it will never live up to any idea of perfection. And so I approach everything with a lightness that makes creating a happy process.
