In January I managed to achieve a big win! But February had other ideas, it reminded me of life’s realities, by kindly handing me a huge loss! In January I set a lowish bar, and straddled it easily. So in February I assumed, that with equal ease, I would stroke the next hard thing to do off my hard things to do list. Maybe January was the problem, an unexpected win is always hard to follow, especially when you’re now expecting success to happen! You may think this is a little early to admit failure and halt, but I don’t, and I don’t for several good reasons.

Firstly the story, which was about a little boy in ICU and told from the point of view of his Teddy Bear, was emotionally beyond me. My psyche said no thanks, we’re not going back there!

I wanted to write an encouraging tale, but no matter how hard I tried, it just wouldn’t come out! At the time I just wanted to get through it, and presently I don’t want to go back. I suppose the first lesson from failure is that just because you’ve a good idea doesn’t mean you should or can write about it.

My second February fail was trying to make a daily video. There are two aspects to this challenge, technical (which I thought would be hard) and substance (which I didn’t think about at all.) The mistake I made was focusing solely on expanding my technical ability, (which I actually achieved!) But the real problem was content, I just assumed I’d have something meaningful to say each day, okay, something interesting, okay, okay, something plausibly coherent. Maybe I should take this as a 50/50, you know a draw? But it wasn’t a draw, it was a fail.

One or perhaps two videos per week is doable. For me, one each day, even when it is time limited. But unlike the first challenge I’m not finished with this yet, because I understand what went wrong. There is a specific series of videos I want to make but to achieve this I must formulate in my mind how the video will be made, (its okay to deviate from this, but you can only deviate from what you already possess!) Next I must script what I’m going to say, this could be anything from a few bullet points to a word for word text. Then finally I must consider delivery and performance. I know, as I knew, that a video should only be released into the ether after taking these steps.

I needed to stop, to take time, to think, and to plan; grafting wasn’t going to work and true self-discipline was stopping to regroup! We always think self-discipline is keeping going, yet the odd time it isn’t, especially if you’re headed the wrong direction. Jui Jitsu has a witticism that you either win or learn. Defeat is a teacher. Within this paradigm truly losing is a failure to learn, so maybe February really just gave me two big learns.