Episode #28
Avoid Failure - Go Where You Feel Small
Episode 28 Show Notes
Avoid Failure when you Go Where You Feel Small is your Mindset Monday tip from Samurai Innovation. This training will help you optimize your mindset this week so that you minimize the effect that failure has on you. This will allow you to get onto the business of succeeding at your highest ambitions.
In this training, you will also note a key phrase:
You Do Not Have to Clumsily Fumble Through Failure
Are you a big fish in a small or medium sized pond?
Think abut it for a minute. Think about the environment in which you work, play, live and exist in. Are you the biggest fish in your pond? And if so, that's okay, but there's a damaging side to that. And there's a downside to that that can actually cost you a lot of enjoyment of your life, can cost you a lot of time, money and lost opportunity.
Here's what I mean by that. A lot of times you work really hard to ascend in your life. You work really hard to build your career. You work hard to be the best parent on the block. You work hard to provide for your family. You work hard to grow yourself and personally challenge yourself, and a lot of times you rise to the top of your industry. You rise to the top of your company. Maybe you own the company. You rise to the top of your neighborhood. Maybe you have the nicest house on the block. Maybe you have the most well adjusted kids, and you have a great relationship with your husband or your wife. That's excellent, because you have reached a level of success. But that level of success causes you to be the big fish in your pond.
It might mean that you've reached a plateau, and it's time to find a new pond to swim in. Here's how you do it. So, the mindset this week is go where you feel smaller. Go where you feel smaller. Let me explain what this is. You don't have to leave your pond. You have to leave your industry, or give up your job, or change companies, or move houses, but internally in your mental environment, you need to expand that.
Now I got asked a great question the other day, and it was my mother-in-law actually who asked me the question, and she said, "Well, you're now a fourth degree black belt in Aikido. Why do you need to keep going to seminars? Like haven't you learned everything there is to learn?" And it was an amazing question. It was a great question. Why? Because from her perspective, she is thinking that I've reached a level of mastery. But the truth is, I keep going to Aikido seminars because I go where I feel small. I go where I intentionally make myself feel small. I go to seminars across the world where I'm training with people who are sixth, seventh and eighth degree masters of the art.
I go there because when they show me something, it makes me feel small. It makes me feel like a white belt and a beginner again. And I love that. Because they'll come over, and the sensei will come over and say, "Hey Shane, you're doing this pretty good, but okay, let's try stepping it up a notch and try this." Or, "Hey, I'm going to challenge you. I want you to be moving this way." Or, "I want you to defend and neutralize the attacker before he even strikes." And all of a sudden it brings me down to a level of feeling small. It makes me feel like a beginner again.
But guess what, that's how we break plateaus.
That's how we go from feeling small ... sorry, that's how we go from feeling big to feeling small. And guess what, when you become small, you become bigger. And what I mean by that is when you intentionally challenge yourself and put yourself in environments where you feel like the newbie. You feel like the beginner. You feel like the most inexperienced person in the room. That breaks plateaus. It causes you to look at new ideas, to look at new ways of doing things, to actually grow and define some skills for yourself. It causes you to look at your current goals and ambitions and say are those large enough. Wow.
I mean, if you're sitting in a room of people who are three or four levels beyond where you are right now, it does a couple things. The first thing it does, it resets your mindset. The second thing it does, it speeds up your learning and your success, because you don't have to clumsily fumble through failure. Let me repeat that.
You don't have to clumsily fumble through failure.
What I mean by that is if you're sitting in a room with people that are two or three or four levels ahead of where you want to be, and where you are right now, you don't have to fail like they failed.
You can actually walk up to them and say: Mr. So and So, Mr. Bob, hey, how did you reach this? Hey, I'm at your point. My business is a doing a million dollars a year revenue, and your business is doing 10 million dollars revenue. How did you get there? And he'll tell you. Here is a couple of levels of ascension that I had to make. Here are the learning points. Here's how I scaled my business. Here's how I grew it. Here is how I tripped up and made a few mistakes. Hey, make sure you don't make these mistakes. Find the right team. Get the right capital or whatever.
When you put yourself in that way, you don't have to clumsily fumble through failure. You can actually climb over failure and get to success, because these people have gone ahead of you. They figured it out and they're willing to share their knowledge with you.
When I'm on the mats in the dojo and I'm training with a seventh or eighth degree black belt, he's gone through everything that I need to go through, and he can point out exactly where my failure point would be. Or they can challenge me and say hey, if you can want to get from where you are now to the next level, you have to focus on this one thing. And guess what? I feel small in that moment.
I take that smallness back to my dojo, to me students and I start training on that for three, six months, maybe 12 months. And all of a sudden one day I'm met with a eureka moment where I go AH, I got it. I finally figured it out. I broke through the plateau. I went up to the next level, and that's possible for you.
I want you this week to challenge yourself to grow, and go where you feel small. Now, you might want to enroll in a conference. You might want to take a course. You might want to pick up a book. Read a book on a whole different topic that you're not normally used to. Be stunned by the lingo and the language and the terminology. Look at what they're accomplishing. There's a lot of transferable success in the world, if you're willing to look for it and apply it. So, when you intentionally set yourself to be in the position where you feel small, and you might not understand everything, that's a great place. That's how you break a plateau and how you move up to the next level of where you want to be.
Challenge yourself this week.
Go somewhere. Do something. Register yourself. Put yourself in an environment where you are now the smallest or the newest person on the block. Absorb it. Learn from it, and I guarantee you that those ideas will come back and help you become bigger in your current place, in your current station on life.
Drop me a line in the comments to let me know what you intend to do this week, or in the next month to make this happen, and I'll be happy to hear from you.
Domo Arigato.