As a child I was told not to walk on the wall in case I fell, not to play with knives unless I cut myself, not to eat too much in case I was sick. These and many more avoidance commands came out of love and concern but possibly set me up for risk avoidance.
Our life is strengthened by hardship. The knocks, the falls, the mistakes and errors are what make us. It’s the picking ourselves up from ways that don’t work and doing things differently is what leads to breakthroughs. It’s the learning and applying better behaviours that develops and strengthens us.
In many respects every breakthrough opens the door to more breakthroughs as long as we are willing to embrace and reframe error. We always have a choice with error – we can take it personally and see it as a fault of our self or we can take it as a behaviour that we have performed that is not useful, that has nothing to do with out identity and that can be done again in a different way.
If we subscribe to the latter notion it leads to a willingness to confront our greatest fears and do what we dislike the most almost eagerly seeking error so that we can make more distinctions.
A great way to accelerate this growth process is to eagerly seek to express your “Not Me” behaviours. These are any behaviour that you don’t have as your identity. By doing something that is “Not Me” you will create new neurological pathways that will drive new ways of being and looking at the world. Even your classification of ‘Error’ will change as your perspective on life shifts. “Not Me” behaviours and ways to master them are dealt with in detail in the in8model book – click here to learn more.
So, today, take this thought and apply it in your life and practice. It may be as simple as making sure that you make a decision on something that has been hanging out there undecided for a while or in the practice it may be ‘biting the bullet’ and giving absolutely optimal recommendations for a person’s care without any concern for whether they accept it or not.
Embrace error and watch the change.
