From birth, there are certain things
that all humans share, regardless of language or country. When we are born, no one is born with
the ability to walk, talk, feed themselves, tie shoes or write their name. Each of us has gone through the process
of learning those things. And we
failed many times in the process.
Those are some of the things that all healthy people share. It is part of our human
experience. And it is part of the
common ground that binds us together as a human race.
At the same time, even though we all
experienced times of failing, like falling over and over when first learning to
walk, we somehow began learning the value of
not being wrong. For some reason, we learn that failure
is bad. By a certain age, we
invest more time protecting and defending ourselves from the embarrassment of
being wrong. In fact, we will
sacrifice love, success or life all in the name of being right about our point
of view. This occurs in religion,
politics, science, business, media, parenting, marriage, friendships, etc. How does a human being go from falling
over and over and getting back up to attempt to unsuccessfully walk to being
afraid of failure or being wrong?
When we learn to walk, we never
defended ourselves when we fell.
Nor did we defend ourselves when we mispronounced a word. There was no fear of failure no matter
how many times we fell from the first few steps. And we were not punished, judged or given a bad grade. How did we go from not believing that
falling was wrong to a fear of being wrong?
Once we learn language, we also
learn the meaning of many things in life.
We learn the value of being right or wrong, which occurs in school, home
and eventually work. We are
constantly rewarded for being right.
In some cases, we are rewarded for proving others wrong.
We invest considerable amounts of
time and energy to prove our point of view is correct and some one else’s is
wrong. It may be one of the
determining factors in divorce. It
could be the catalyst for war or terrorist acts. And it may be the driving force for self-deprecating actions
like bulimia and obesity. In the
case of bulimia or obesity, people will make themselves wrong for their
appearance.
As you can see, the philosophy of
being right and making others wrong can be a trap. Ultimately no one wins.
To further illustrate the point, a
child may want to make his or her parents wrong for the way they were
raised. To prove her parents were
wrong, she may intentionally fail in life. That way she can prove how wrong her parents were. At the same time, she gets to be the
helpless victim. If she never
discovers this inimical behavior, she may lead a life of unhappiness, even
though her unhappiness makes her right about her parents. What a trap!
Perhaps there is something to the
innocence of our childhood. It
never occurred to us that walking and talking were not meant for us, even
though we failed countless times in both.
If we had the so called intellect and maturity of an adult when we were
children, many of us would not walk, talk, feed ourselves or tie our
shoes. We would marvel at those
talented people who were capable of those things and say it was luck, genetics,
etc.
If you tap into the innocence of
your childhood, it becomes easier to explore new horizons, learn and develop
and make existing talents better.
Perhaps that was the mindset of people like Thomas Edison, the Wright
Brothers, Nikola Tesla and Steve Jobs.
None of those people had anything special over the rest of us. Take a note from them. Let go of right and wrong and explore
new possibilities. You may learn
something new about yourself and success.
What do you
think? I would love to hear your feedback. And I’m open to ideas. Or if you
want to write me about a specific topic, connect through my blog www.turnaroundip.blogspot.com.
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