365QOD- Day1062

Freedom to Fail

"Instead of trying to make your life perfect, give yourself the freedom to make it an adventure, and go ever upward"- Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox

Humans are planners.  I admit that I am one. I plan most things in my life BUT I truly enjoy when something unexpected happens.  Life then turns into an adventure and it becomes memorable.

I believe that we do not like to fail and that is why we plan.  We believe that by planning we can control our desired outcome.  I believe that the planning process is very valuable but once you are into execution the plan often gets tossed.  That does not make the planning process any less valuable.  It gets you to think through the path before you have to adapt to the curves along the way.

Drew also said that,
"As you might expect, building Dropbox has been the most exciting, interesting and fulfilling experience of my life.  What I haven't really shared is that it's also been the most humiliating,frustrating and painful experience too, and I can't even count the number of things that have gone wrong."

We need to hope that at end of execution that the experience turns out to be 'exciting, interesting and fulfilling.'  BUT be ready for it to be 'humiliating,frustrating and painful experience' along the way.  We have to detach ourselves from the outcome and put our best effort to make it a success.  That is all that we can control.  As Einstein observed, "God does not play dice with the world."

Today's question is:
"Do you get discouraged by things going wrong along the way to success?"

365QOD- Day677

" Julie Bowen Actress, mother of three, and failed perfectionist" - title of advice chapter

Failed Perfectionist.  What a combination of words!  Lately, I have noticed a few two word combinations that could have been used for website names. Cool combinations.

I do not believe that I have ever been a perfectionist.  I have make attempts to make something the best I can BUT I always felt it could be improved.

So if you strive for the perfection and you fail, have you truly failed?  Most likely the result is great. So what?
Did you learn and could you make it a little better? If you can then even though it is not perfect it can get closer to perfection.  Perfection is like the horizon.  You can see the horizon BUT never reach it.

Maybe it is the engineer in me.  We think good enough for all practical purposes is good enough.  I can not think of any design I have come up with that reached the level of perfection.  There is always something that you can live with but fails the perfection test.

Today's question is:
"So what if it isn't perfect?"

365QOD-Day609

"To live is to give" - Rachel on Today show

I watched Today's show this Saturday morning and they featured Rachel.  She had been in an accident and suffered an internal "almost" de-capitation (her head was almost severed from her spinal cord).

What was amazing about the story was the recovery effort.  She spends 8 hours a day M-TH in physical therapy.  Having undergone physical therapy in the past, I found that extreme amount hard to believe BUT then her recovery was impressive.  I have seen many who could not even handle one hour of therapy.  Most of them lost the hope of recovering to their previous level.

Today's question is:
"Would you be willing to invest 8 hours a day to recover from a losing position?"

P.S. THANKS to my favorite physical therapist Helen who has 'fixed' me in the past.

365QOD- Day600

“The ubiquitous wd-40 lubricant got its name because the first 39 experiments failed.  It stands for water displacement 40^th attempt” – Fast company article

In these words I find great comfort and advice.  Most of us expect success too quickly.  We almost expect it to happen on our first attempt.  We will settle if it occurs on our second, third or fourth.  But after that we will look around so as to assure we are not making a fool of ourselves before making any additional attempts.

Unfortunately most often we tend to stop too quickly.  We just give up.  But as the story teaches us some things take a little while to perfect.  In an early post I told the story of how Colonel Sanders got over a thousand rejections before getting a deal for his secret recipe.

Today’s question is:

“Could you stomach 40 failures before success strikes?”

P.S. THANKS for 600 days of support