076: Gain the Courage to Screw Up

It is back to school time , so some acknowledgement of what the kids are going through and if that makes them more of a pain in the ass in the house .

Biggest thing we can do is , as the school year begins , keep a tab on our emotions , keep a tab on our expectations and try to stay as calm as possible , as steady as possible , and empathize and encourage and believe in our kids as they start the school year .

So , shifting today , today's topic , we're going to talk about failure and we're going to start with a failure over here at Tommy G Coaching . Yesterday morning it was a Tuesday . Tuesday is when the podcast gets released , and at 8.24 , I got this email from one of the guys that listens and it said in this week's episode you sounded different off , maybe .

I just wanted to reach out and see if you're okay and I was just . My brain started thinking was I off last week ? When did I record ? What was I doing when I recorded and reminded myself that this is feedback and that we like feedback and that feedback is going to help us grow . So finished what I was doing and then I went and listened to the episode .

It was probably like 10 , 15 minutes later and when I logged into Spotify , pulled it up , said to Brenda hey , do you know that episode 75 is 27 minutes long , Not our typical length of episode and her mouth kind of dropped a little shock in her and she had uploaded the unedited file that I'd sent her .

This is like a rough draft of a paper that you're writing . It's got long pauses . I'm sipping coffee , I'm repeating the same thing over a few times . It's not dialed , it's not the final cut that you guys listen to every week . And in this recording I get a lot of my random thoughts out . I kind of go on tangents .

I'll say the same thing a couple times to make sure that it sounds right and the way that I really want to say it .

And then Brenda takes it and she cuts it up , she moves stuff around , she turns it into something that we can digest , that we can listen to , that's concise and something that gets our message across pretty clearly and that's kind of our workflow and that's how it's been going for the last year and a half or so .

So the uncut rough draft version got uploaded and that's what got downloaded by any of you guys that listen early on Tuesdays and if you didn't listen early last Tuesday , you missed it . But this one guy sent me an email to check in to see if I was okay and I am like so thankful that he sent this in .

But when we realized this , I was sitting outside working from the porch . She was inside kind of our sunroom , sitting on the couch . She deleted it and then she stood up and said my whole body feels numb right now . I think I'm having a traumatic response to this and I don't know if you can hear it in my voice .

I was kind of laughing , taking it pretty lightly , and she was like no , I don't know if you can hear it in my voice . I was kind of laughing , taking it pretty lightly , and she was like no , I don't think you understand what got uploaded , but I did understand .

I understood that people heard the rawness the side of me that's not very natural at recording these podcasts and I just said like I've put myself out there so much that , yeah , I feel embarrassed about what happened , I'm kind of bummed , but this is just part of the process and Brenda's having this total different experience .

You know she writes , you know she writes , she posts a lot for the company and she also stays behind the scenes , which is totally fine , huge asset . And it doesn't set her up to fail , at least not publicly .

This is what we want to look at , what we're making a failure mean , Because the problem isn't the possibility of failure , it's what we make failure mean .

If we make failure mean that we're an idiot or that we're weak or we're not good enough , we'll avoid failure at all costs or we'll worry about what other people will think if we mess up , if we make a mistake , and then we don't put ourselves out there , we don't try , we don't have a conversation , we don't do something new .

So I got a buddy that's going for the Spartan trifecta . So the Spartan races . The Spartan trifecta is doing a sprint which is 5K and obstacles , a super which is 10K and obstacles , and a beast which is 20K , 13 miles , all the obstacles . You do it all in one year . That's called the Spartan trifecta .

And he did one race last year , loved it got super motivated and at the beginning of this year he committed and since he's committed to this he's looking good , he's feeling a lot better , you can see he's healthier and he's checked off the sprint , he's checked off the super and the beast is next weekend .

So I talked to him during a workout last week and he wasn't sure if he was going to go for it . His knees were kind of shot after the super . The beast that he's going to run is about 10 hours away driving and it's the hardest of the three races right , it's 20K , 30 obstacles , and it's the most vert out of anything that he's done before .

So he's not sure if he's going to do it . Last time I talked to him he was still on the fence , but he did say I used to be afraid to fail , but I'm not anymore .

You know , imagine the opposite that if he was making failure mean something negative , something bad about him or about what other people would think of him at the beginning of the year , he wouldn't have tried any of this and he would have missed out on the training , the challenges , the push crossing , the finish line , that celebration for the super .

His wife and kids went there with him and they camped out and his whole family hung out together for the weekend . Like that . That's such a memory he's going to have because he went for it . So even if he doesn't go to the beast , he can call it a failure , but he's not afraid that that means there's something wrong with him .

He'll try it again next year If he so even if he doesn't go to the beast , he can call it a failure , but he's not afraid that that means there's something wrong with him . He'll try it again next year . If he goes to the beast and can't finish and he fails at finishing , he's not afraid of doing that .

He knows he's not a bad person , he knows he's not screwed up and he's not afraid to fail . So I'm going to say it again the problem isn't the possibility of failure , it's what we're gonna make that failure mean . So I'm gonna do one more example , and this is more about productivity . I'm working with a guy that has three kids . He's got one on the way .

Both him and his wife work . He travels a lot for work , and planning and organization have always eluded him . Those are his words , and now everything's really falling on his wife to plan , to get ahead of things , and he wants to change that up . And so in the first few sessions we did some planning , we took some action . I showed him some strategies .

He executed , he saw the benefits , but outside of the sessions he wasn't planning . So in coaching , that's what we start to explore when we want to do something and we're not doing it . What's happening in our brain .

So , as we were talking about it , what kind of came out was this worry that if he took the time to plan and then didn't execute that plan , that he'd be failing . But what is he making that failure mean ? So why don't you want to fail ? Is the question that I asked him , and he said I'd be coming up short . I'm not used to failing .

He's starting to make up this story . He's starting to make up a story that failure means he's coming up short . When we're out in the world and we take a shot at something new and we miss , that result is totally neutral . It's our story about the result that really matters , about the result that really matters .

So for this guy , he knows when he plans he gets more done , Even if he doesn't execute the full plan . He's more productive than when he doesn't plan his day out . His goal is to be more helpful around the house , to be less stressed with the kids , and planning is going to help that .

So instead of making failure mean that he's coming up short when he doesn't complete his plan for the day , he's making it mean that he's trying , that he's getting better at planning , that this is the process . This is how I grow . If you're stuck , you're not trying something

. Procrastination is a big symptom of fearing failure . So if you're procrastinating on something little , something big , explore that , Because if we don't fail , we're not going to grow , we're not going to become our best self just by doing things that we're comfortable with , doing things that we're confident we'll do a good job at .

So we know all of the memes the you got to fail forward . Failure is just a stepping stone . Success is built upon failures . We know these intellectually , we read them , we hear the reels of the motivational speakers talking about them .

But subconsciously we avoid failure and it can be as simple as having a conversation with your wife or going to the gym more often , or putting your resume out to a few people , or managing your time better and planning your day . If you've been wanting to work on yourself and it's not happening , it's because you're making failure mean something negative about you .

So we want to get unstuck , we want to start trying new things , because that's when life gets more interesting . And when life's more interesting we have more joy , we have more excitement , and then we're cooler dads , we're better husbands . Life just gets to be more enjoyable . So failure is okay . That's what I got for you guys this week .

Hope you have a good one and I'll catch you next time .