Last year, I went disco roller skating for the first time in my life.
I was like a small baby learning how to walk for the first time. The roller skates and my coordination were in a bout for total control.
I only fell once. But when I fell…. oh man… the floor was definitely hurting more than me.
With a child-like curiosity, I laughed on the ground for a longggg moment and then popped back on my wheels.
It was that moment in between falling and getting back up that made all the difference. I took that time to laugh, which was a way to huddle with my mind.
My conscious whispered, “slow down”.
The modern adage says: “fall 9 times, stand up 10”.
However, what if you think about why you “fell” before continuing forward?
“Hmmmmm… why did this happen?”
It would be wise to know why you “fell”, so you don’t continue doing it.
In reflecting on my roller skating experience, which embodies life and its ”failures”, I can rephrase the modern adage for myself to: “fall 1 time, get up 2.”
“Failing”…. “Falling”.
“Falling”….. “Failing”.
My emphasis on utilizing the tool of reflection, in between a fall and getting up, isn’t about lessening the “failures”. It’s about more effectively learning from them, because if I don’t, it’s really going to hurt my a^*.
How we view our circumstances is linked to how we process change. It is best to see change from the lens of an opportunity.
Be an Optimistic vs Pessimistic Contrarian
Think back to 2020.
The first 3 months were difficult – adapting to the change of living indoors like rats in a cage.
As shocking as the change may have been, I used all of 2020 to learn and read. Thanks to God, I consumed the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, which I had never done before.
When comparing optimism with pessimism within the first 3 months of 2020, the societal outlook was definitely leaning towards the side of pessimism.
Yes, there was a cataclysm of extreme “bad” at one moment in time. A recession loomed. For the first time in history, we faced the spread of Coronavirus.
Here are what some people on Twitter said that year (keep in mind that I was only on Twitter for 10 minutes after searching the keyword “2020”):
“2020 may go down as the worst year ever.”
“2020 HAS BEEN THE WORST YEAR SO FAR. Potential WWIII, Kobe and Gigi’s Death, Coronavirus spreading, Tom Hanks and other celebrities tested positive for Coronavirus, NBA suspended for the whole season. AND IT’S ONLY THE 3RD MONTH OF 2020.”
“I think we can officially crown 2020 as the worst year of all time.”
“2020 really might be the worst year we’ve lived through.”
But life is all about perspective.
When it rains, we can say “Yes! It’s raining. How amazing that God created rain to provide for us, plants, and animals’ needs.”…. OR…. we can say “Yeah. It’s raining again. What am I living in Seattle [a place where it rains 150/365 days in a year]?!”
In the same pool of thought, it was each of our individual choices to see 2020 as “amazing” or as “terrible”.
As the insightful engineer and entrepreneur, Peter Diamandis says, “Problems are goldmines.”
The same thing happens when you make a mistake, when you fall. It can either be seen as the worst thing to ever happen to you or the greatest opportunity to improve.
Why Problems are Goldmines
In the darkest times, we find out what we are truly made of. Sink or swim to the current of life’s flow.
When astray from the norm and detaching from our set routines, we often find insight to our most conscious problems.
Two renowned psychologists have done research on how insight occurs. This is the 4 level framework they came up with:
(1) Immersion into something causes
(2) an impasse to occur,
(3) which creates diversion
(4) and eventually insight.
You can’t reach insight without first surpassing the impasse.
Scavenging Meaning from the Mundane
There are some notable names, such as Isaac Newton and Andrew Stanton, who used obstacles as opportunities and dead periods as inspiration that led them to breakthroughs.
They had moments of diversion… took time to think about things and used their down time as an opportunity… then were better off compared to when they originally started.
Isaac Newton
In 1665, Cambridge University was shut down from the Black Plague. Isaac Newton was forced to stay home.
Newtown was distanced from his normal routine. Him being home deviated from the resources and people he had access to.
Yet, during this diversion, the time and space he was gifted, gave him insight into creating calculus, parts of optic theory, and came to understand gravity on a whole different level.
Andrew Stanton
It was the early 2000s, when Andrew Stanton of Pixar Animation Studios wanted to write his next blockbuster hit. He had already written the blockbusters, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Cars, and Finding Nemo.
He was on the hot seat to write another banger.
This time he was working on WALL-E. His creative juices weren’t flowing as readily though. Stanton faced an impasse: designing WALL-E’s face.
If stuck in a rut, there is a best practice to view projects from a “30,000 foot view”. The point is to look at the project from a higher, different perspective.
It was only when Stanton was at a baseball game one day, while in his “cloud level seats”, that he used his binoculars the wrong way. That gave him a spark.
The robot’s face, WALL-E, could look like a “binocular on a stem”.
Stanton was on the cusp of nothing. But that led him to everything. He took the time to step away from the grunt work of his new project and found exactly what he was looking for within his binoculars – ironically, he wasn’t really looking at all.
You
Whatever you are doing right now, keep calm.
The times can certainly seem more crappy than we are used to.
But there are better times ahead, if you embrace the current pain in the world’s veins. More importantly, now is a time for you to become better and gain more insight into developing your skills.
2024 is the Greatest Time to be Alive
Within the greatest adversity and the most unordinary times in history, we have the golden opportunity of improvement in front of our eyes.
We have the opportunity to revamp our systems, readjust our thinking, and secure insight to new ideas.
Instead of viewing a “problem” as a problem, take a new perspective. That posture can allow us to persist through the most difficult of times.
The thing is: it’s not as bad as your imagination makes it out to be.
Think about it.
God bless,
Anthony
HUGE THANKS to the editing work of
and CA Green.
I’m grateful to be blessed with their perspectives.
Without there help in revising my draft, this piece would still be equivalent to a lump of clay.
Here is my website — you can find more stories, quotes, and deep dives here.
Each comment is helpful feedback for me to become a better writer and also connect with you more – let me know your thoughts on this piece
If you enjoyed — share with others
