Getting By Is Worse Than Failing

This is a guest post by Charlie Gilkey for all three of our networks/communities.

You read the title right and yes, it’s counter-intuitive. Since it is so counter-intuitive I’d like to take a bit to explain it.

I’ve worked with a lot of people who do epic stuff like the 12 Week Challenge and there are two frequent trends that come up all the time:

1. Their objectives are too small
2. Their strategies are too safe

In case you’re curious, I’m using objectives and strategies in the same way that Jonathan and Lea did in Week 2 of the challenge. The over-arching reason that people tend to create small objectives for themselves and safe strategies is because they’re scared to fail. Better to dream small and play it safe than to dream big and be risky, right?

Wrong.

The likely outcome from playing small and safe is that you’ll continually set up situations in which you just get by - and getting by is far, far worse than failing.

Failure gives us a chance to evaluate what we could have done differently and identify what the factors were that led to an unsatisfactory outcome. Failure requires us to look inward and reevaluate our objectives and passions. In short, failure can become a massive opportunity to learn and move forward.

Continually getting by however, often doesn’t offer the opportunities that failure does. Instead of reevaluating whether we’ve picked the right strategy, we decide to keep doing the same thing harder and longer. Instead of asking whether our objective was right in the first place, we “dig in” and keep at it. Because we never really stop and evaluate what’s working, we keep doing the same things and getting the same results.

But hey, we’re getting by. The break will come soon, right?

I know it seems a bit premature to talk about this just after the first month into the 12 Week Challenge, but consider this as much like formulating your exit plan before you start because, when you’re honest with yourself and notice that you’re just getting by (even on the challenge), you can be proactive about it rather than grinding for another two quarters.

When you set high but realistic objectives and commit to doing them, you can’t play it safe. When you set out to have a novel strategy that mirrors your unique business and brand, it inherently comes with a risk of failure. But this really isn’t as bad as it seems because if you’re successful, you’re rocking it - and if you’re not, you learn a lot of lessons quickly.

Consider the alternatives: You set low objectives and meet them but they’re keeping you from comfortably getting by. Or perhaps you follow the same strategies everybody else does so you don’t learn much and you don’t stand out. Is that really what you had in mind when you started this challenge? If you’re a health and wellness coach, do you really want to model this for your clients?

If you find yourself getting by, here are five simple areas to look to change things up:

1. Change your expectations

It’s important that the expectations you change are at the very high level and not the low level stuff. It’s unrealistic to have “make a million dollars in one year” as a milestone for new illustrators and setting such high expectations at the lower level milestones and benchmarks leads to disappointment and demotivation.

That said, there’s no reason you can’t change your objective from “make a sustainable living illustrating” to “being the go-to illustrator for children’s books.” That has some motivational traction.

2. Change the way you perceive yourself

Many people set small objectives and safe strategies because they don’t think they can achieve bigger objectives and implement innovative strategies. This self-limiting belief ensures that they won’t do it and only creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you see that your failures aren’t a personal defect and recognize that a lot of the people you admire have a long track record of failing, you can give yourself room to stretch into some discomfort and come alive. “Fortune favors the bold,” after all.

3. Change your social environment

One of the things the biggest determinants of success is the social environment we form around ourselves. If your friends are settlers, you will be, too. If your friends help you flourish, you will.

If you find yourself in the unfortunate situation where those around you don’t believe in you and what you’re doing, please find someone who does and start helping them succeed. It’s hard to do great work without having someone to share your trials and tribulations with.

4. Change the scope of your work

Instead of merely regurgitating what everyone else is already talking about, set out to add something to your area of expertise. You don’t have to make your mark tomorrow or next month, but you have to start your own trail at some point to be a trailblazer.

Once you see that you’re not just illustrating, but instead are creating a body of work that’s changing things, you’ll be able to think more strategically about where your business and brand is going. This shifts you from reactive hustling to proactive hustling.

5. Change your market

I’ve run across many entrepreneurs who find themselves in a market that’s not ready to grow. What you have to remember is that your audience is part of the social environment that you’re creating, so it might be necessary to change markets to one that will support your growth.

Before you abandon your current tribe though, recognize that you can change the way you interact with them. Instead of telling them, show them. Instead of showing them, lead them. What seem to be subtle changes in words create a big difference in how you see yourself and how they see you.

To be a thriving entrepreneur, you have to embrace change, discomfort and the possibility of failure. Please understand that I am not recommending recklessness or suggesting that you actively try to fail; the body of my work on entrepreneurship and my history as a business coach is largely built on smart strategies for harnessing creativity to build a successful, thriving business.

That said, many people agree that just getting by isn’t real success and the fact that it’s so easy to fall into continually getting by makes it worse than the opportunities that come with failure. What I see as the best opportunity of the 12 Week Challenge is the chance to challenge yourself to do more than get by - for the rest of your life.

Now, get out there and make some waves.

About the Author: Charlie Gilkey is a sponsor of the 12 Week Challenge and writes about meaningful action, creativity, and entrepreneurship at Productive Flourishing. Follow him on Twitter to get bite-sized slices of mojo.

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