Credit to http://www.boxofcrayons.biz/ for this insight…
and if he succeeds once, he’s in.
He treats his failures simply as practice shots.”
~ Charles F.Kettering
DON’T MAKE A BIG THING OF IT
So you’ve committed to do something bold, something that takes you out to the edge of yourself. Fantastic. And suddenly it’s so easy to put pressure on yourself.
It needs to be right, it needs to be perfect. I need to do it well, I need to do it flawlessly.
People will be looking.
LEARN FROM MAGICIANS
Part of the skill of being a magician is mastering the redirect. That’s when they get you to look at one thing, while they make “the magic” happen somewhere else.
So try out some magical redirect. Do this new piece of Great Work on the sly. Don’t draw attention to it, but keep it to yourself. That opens up permission to be less than perfect, to stumble along a bit as you sort things out.
Think of what you’re doing now as practice, a dress rehearsal. You don’t actually have to get it right. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It is just your first (or second, or third, or tenth) go at it, and you’re still figuring it out. It’s a way of taking away the pressure of the public performance, one of the things that can sap our courage.
TEST IT OUT: GO UNDER THE RADAR
Decide what you want to do
Tell one and only one trusted friend.
Don’t tell anyone else.
Keep it quiet.
Set the standard as:
The best I can strive for right now, knowing it won’t be ideal.
Practice it and see what happens.
Give yourself time to debrief.
- What happened?
- What went well?
- What would I want to do again?
- What would I not want to do again?
- What have I learned?
And practice it again, this time with modifications.