Comfortable being Uncomfortable

When someone embarks on a true learning journey, consider this rule number one: One must become comfortable being uncomfortable.

We have to step boldly into the unknown, to experiment, to fail. Then reflect, learn, and step boldly again, back into the unknown.

We call these Learning Cycles. The faster one can go through these cycles, the faster one learns. The faster one learns, the faster one innovates. Our rate of learning is critical for success and for us to build our Creative Confidence.

But to walk into the unknown puts us emotionally into a place where failure is not only possible but likely. But we have been taught by our society to avoid failure like the plague. For in failure we are vulnerable. We risk shame. We fear rejection.

But the only way for us to know which of our assumptions are incorrect is by trying a solution that we think might work. When it fails, which it likely will, our incorrect assumptions are revealed. We then try again, this time understanding the problem more deeply. So our next solution is incrementally better. But again, perhaps not the right one. So we have to try another time. Each time, wiser.

It's important, then, to not do this journey alone but with others we trust. We need to trust them with our vulnerabilities, knowing that when we fail, they will not judge us, but help pick us up so that we can learn, empowering us to once again plunge back into the next learning cycle, one where we Know the Problem better.