Keep moving

Some people, (I have a specific former intern in mind) are scared to move forward. They don't know what to do. They may be working on an undergraduate degree and not getting the grades they want, because they know their studying technique isn't very good. Or maybe stuck in a job they don't like because they don't know what they want to do with their life.

I ask them for ideas, brainstorms. What do you want your life to look like? What classes do you do really well in? Why are those different? What things could happen today to make it a wonderful day?

They can often answer these questions, but don't know the next step. They're scared of doing something wrong, or worse, trying and then failing.

Seeing this multiple times and listening to people further along in their career than I have lead to the same conclusion.

Success is not the opposite of failure, it's the step after it.

Too many people I know are scared of failure. I want to say to them, "Failing is okay!" Failure happens. You can survive failure. It's lack of motion, lack of action that will kill you. It doesn't matter if the action you choose doesn't work the way you want it to. Once you start moving forward, you can more easily evaluate your position, and make changes to it. It's getting that first step that's the hard part.

I told my intern that was struggling with his grades, that it doesn't really matter what study habits he tries to change. The point is to change something, and see if it works. It may not. It probably won't. But he will  have tried something, he can check it off the list if it doesn't work and then try something else. He will eventually find a study method that works really well for him, and more importantly, learn which ones are a waste of his time.

A mentor said something that really stuck me: "It's like riding a bike, you need forward momentum before you can change direction." So get moving, fall a few times, fail a few times, and keep going.