What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?
I have a fear of failure ... to an extent. I guess I am a little risk averse.
Listening to another Simon Sinek podcast, Seth Godin said the following:
My dad, when I was a kid, he gave me a paperweight that said, what would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? His whole thing in giving that to me so early was that so many people are so scared to answer that question honestly, for fear that if they don't achieve whatever the answer is, they'll let themselves and those around them down. But if you do have the confidence and the conviction to answer that question honestly, maybe you won't achieve what you set out to, but you'll get really far down the road just for having tried.
This is quite a liberating, and unnatural way for me at least, way to think. What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? And if you don't achieve it at least you will have made progress on it.
I have a side project and I have hit a bit of a roadblock. I need to do a reasonable amount of work on it and at the moment motivation is a little lacking. Part of that is the daunting prospect of achieving what my head is telling me is success - releasing an app and getting lots of people to use it.
If I knew I could not fail then I would just plough on and release what I already have then work on it again to improve it.
However there is another way to frame this. Maybe what I need to do is move my definition of success so I cannot fail. Maybe I should set my sights on releasing the app and just getting one person to use it. Given the aim of the application, the most important people for me to use it are my parents and I am sure if I released something they would use it - regardless of how well it works or how nice it looks.
For me, this is a much easier target to hit and I know I could do this without failing.
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