Attitude

Success from Failure

/ Tim / 4 Comments

It’s not our successes that matter. Rather it’s our failures: here is where we grow.

I don’t remember where I heard this first or who said it, but it hit a chord with me. Fear of failure often stops me from embarking on projects or setting goals because, well, I might fail. However, it is in the act of recovering from failure that I learn and grow. I see that walking the smooth path to get to a destination is all well and good. I can check out the sites along the way. And it’s all nice and good when I arrive at my destination, but I haven’t learned anything.

I’ve aged, but I haven’t grown.

Ask yourself the question: which vacation do you talk about the most? Is it the one where everything went completely as planned or the one where everything went wrong? It’s the unplanned events that happen in a vacation that make it memorable: the trip to the local emergency ward, the flat tire in the middle of a river, even the visit to the police station to report a robbery. It’s the out of the ordinary things, the unpredictable, the ‘failures’ that give us the stories of our lives.

In failing, I learn. By falling I learn how to get back up again. By being road blocked, I seek another way around. This is where the growth happens. By learning what doesn’t work I am one step closer to learning what does work. And once I have learned what does work, I don’t have to repeat the lesson the next time I am passing through a similar situation. I can learn from my missteps and mistakes. I am a different person from when I started out.

It’s still a struggle for me. I don’t want to fail. I don’t like to fail. Sometimes I don’t even attempt things because I fear I might fail. That’s the perfectionist in me coming out. So I push myself to try new things, to go new places and meet new people. I am not satisfied in maintaining the status quo: I want to move forward. And part of that includes trying things that don’t or won’t work.  So I am working on changing my perception of failure, one day at a time, one step at a time.

Actor Will Smith gives us his take on Failure in the following video: Fail Forward

 

Returning to the River

/ Tim / 2 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, let alone sat down to write this blog. I’d like to say it’s because I was on vacation, too busy with a variety of projects or any other number of reasons other than the truth: I lost heart.

I lost heart because I allowed my ego to stand in my way, an ego that told me that what I do wasn’t making a difference.  It said that what I was doing in life was’t important and I didn’t matter. It said that I really don’t matter. My ego speaks to me in many different ways but usually it does so subtly, undermining my self esteem bit by bit and bringing me down lower with each nip. Slowly I start to believe that I am worth less than I was before until I start to see myself as unworthy and then, worthless.

We usually think of ego as bravado and pride and over rating ourselves: an ego trip is where we build ourselves up way above where we are. But the opposite is also true. An ego trip can also bring us down low and into depression and despair. In both cases I am thinking only about me; I’m better than everyone else–I’m worse than everyone else. Either way, I am deep within ‘self’. And in my case, when I get into ‘self’, that’s when my disease of addiction starts to make inroads to take over.

I am grateful that I am in a recovery program that helps me to recognize when I’ve pulled the plug on the sink and am heading down and circling the drain. I know I need to stop the stream of negativity and move forward. I can start thinking about myself as I am: neither perfection nor damnation. I can remind myself that I am on a journey and that it’s up to me to take the next step and move forward or wallow in the mire. I can make the allow myself to believe that I’m stuck in the mud at the edge of the river and that this is my destination and I don’t deserve any more. But I don’t have to stay here and wallow in the muck of my own making, believing that’s all there is to life.

And so, bit by bit, I am taking back what I allowed my ego to take from me. I don’t have to do it all in one day. All I need to do is stand up and look around at where I am; I don’t want to be here so I can step up out of the muck where the land meets the river and back onto the river. I don’t have to be success and perfection: I want to head toward a destination where I am true to myself, my heart. And it all begins with a decision and an action: returning to the river.

Creativity and Inspiration

/ Tim / 1 Comment

Creativity is not something you wait for. It is something that waits for you. You must decide to be creative, not wait to be. You must challenge yourself. Pick up the brush. Grab hold of the camera. Turn on the computer. Start cooking the meal. Get to the workplace early. Propose the solution. Advance the idea. Become the answer…be the inspiration...Neale Donald Walsch

 

I’ve been writing here for more than a year and a half and I’m often asked where I get my ideas for the blog articles I write. At first it was difficult. Like everything new it was outside my comfort zone and I was a bit nervous about the results. Would there be enough material to write about?

Today I see the ideas everywhere. A year and a half ago I made a decision to write two articles a week and since then I have noticed that the process of finding inspiration gets easier as I write more articles. I find topics because my mind is more attuned to pick out what might be the inspiration for an article. It’s not that I am any brighter or gifted or creative than others. It’s because this is what I pursue.

Writing has become a very important part of my life, along with working to discover more about spirituality and myself. The two go hand in hand. I also belong to a local writers’ group and research writing. If I wish to be a writer, I have to write.

Every one of us has desires and talents that we don’t explore. We tell ourselves that we won’t be good enough or that is just a silly dream. I know, because that’s what kept me away from writing for many years although I was always drawn to it.

If you want to be a painter, then paint. If you want to drive a motorcycle then learn how to drive a motorcycle. You will never skydive from your living room sofa. Nor will you build that cabin in the woods by watching YouTube videos.

If I want to change my life, be creative, learn to enjoy life more, then I have to start ‘doing’. A painter gets better at his art by painting. A driver improves his skills by driving I can’t think about stuff alone; I must get up off of my duff and do. Only then can I put into practice and improve, becoming my ‘answer’, my own inspiration.