Day 4 – What I Want – 30 Days to Clearly Defining It

One of my 30 day challenges was to establish a routine for exercising my body and mind together. I call this one Ted on the Tread, where I listen to Ted Talks for the 45 minutes I spend on my treadmill each morning. For those of you not familiar with this amazing website, there is a feature called Surprise Me that allows you to enter the time you need and choose a category of talks. In my case, I decided to choose “Inspiring”. I tend to send out some intentions for what I’m interested in, before I click on the choose button, and I am indeed surprised and grateful for the choices of Talks that are given to me. My thoughts were on what I would write for today’s blog post. Two subjects came to the surface, the stronger one today was: “I want to fail spectacularly!”

I don’t really want to fail at all, but since my mistakes tend to be great learning opportunities, I want to fail in a loud and noticeable way so I can attract teachers to help me learn and grow massively! Does this make any sense? I realized it was a motivating factor in starting this blog with these “What I Want” posts. Nothing will happen until I take action, so just start it with what I know, and commit to improving as I go. So I mustered up my courage and launched it. Let me tell you, it is liberating to start on a path. I feel energized and motivated. I’m doing something I love, it doesn’t feel like work, and I feel like I’m expressing myself. So, what was holding me back all this time? Fear of failure doesn’t feel like the right reason, exactly. So, what is it? It came to me in a Ted Talk by Brené Brown: Listening to Shame. My fear was about being vulnerable. 

As I listened to her masterfully walk me through an understanding that vulnerability is the truest sign of courage and guilt is not remotely the same as shame, I understood that I had everything to gain by exploring my authentic voice in my writing. Then I remembered what I wrote yesterday about my adoption. I basically told the world something I choose to keep close to my chest most of my life, something I would only provide closed answers or inauthentic responses to questions on, so people would not ask more. I did that out of guilt of possibly hurting my adoptive parents feelings, and shame because I refused to give it much thought, but didn’t want people to know that. I chose to not be vulnerable and gave up the gift of possibly growing from others experiences on the subject. I was not listening to my shame and lost out to its wisdom.

In this case, I failed big time in my mind, but very privately in reality. No one came to answer my unasked questions and I didn’t grow. Well, it may sometimes take a giant fish slap to the face to wake me up, but I think I got this one loud and clear. Try LARGE and let other’s in to witness and guide you on what you did. Opinions are just options and possibilities you may not have considered. So, following in the steps of giants before me, I share my vulnerability for today and admit that my thoughts may be a little jumbled on this topic, but my feelings are clear. I want to grow and succeed massively. I want to reach out and embrace the world of possibilities. And, I want to fall as often as it takes to learn, because I can always choose to get up, dust myself off, reflect on what tripped me, and improve.

Cheers to failing spectacularly and thank God for sending us an endless supply of guardian angels to help move on.