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Embrace error and create change in you life

As a child I was told not to walk on the wall in case I fell, not to play with knives because I might cut myself, not to eat too much in case I was sick. Maybe you have memory of such utterances and they still have an effect on you today. But worse still, maybe you hear yourself saying such things to your children and those you care about.

I am sure that the intention behind these negative commands came out of love and concern but maybe they have an effect that they aren’t necessarily designed for. In my experience I think that these suggestions have possibly set me up for two scenarios.

Firstly, they can create the event that they were designed to avoid due to the planting of ideation around the disaster happening, this is obviously the opposite of what was intended.

The second message these ideas promote is 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.

So, today, take this thought and apply it in your life. Identify what your “Not Me Behaviours” are. 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 it may be the opposite and not making a decision. It may be having a difficult conversation that needs to be held or it may be the opposite and not jumping in. It may be cleaning the house fully before leaving in the morning or it may be the exact opposite.

Whatever your conditioned response that prevents you from doing something because it is “Not Me” – do it. If it contains the unsafe prospects of error, mistakes and rejection – do it.

Embrace error and watch the change.