No Pain, No Gain

My first day in my new job was pretty routine. Talking to the IT folks, getting the computer and phone working, having the first day lunch.

My second day, I was given an opportunity to work on. Something that was mine. This is something that I have not done in awhile. In my old role, I was brought in as an outside advisor. I had ideas. I had influence. But often, someone else made the decision. Now I get to make the decisions.

Making decisions is hard because it triggers fear. What if we are wrong? What if someone doesn't like what we decided? What if they laugh at us? Standard lizard brain stuff, which is why we generally avoid making decisions as long as we can.

But decision making is a skill like any other. It requires practice. And the main way to learn is by making mistakes. When we make bad decisions, we learn from them. And we learn to make better decisions.

It can be painful. But when we look at the pain, we can learn from that, too. We can see that "failure" and "mistake" are just concepts. They are just our thoughts. What can we say of failure or success, other than failure is that which we don't want and success is that which we do?

Jeff