How to make sure you never fail again....

by Minim Pro
In the last post on the blog, I discussed ways that The Fear can currently stall your projects and trick you into procrastinating whilst telling yourself you're making progress. For me, perfectionism is the most treacherous example of this and here's a couple of further thoughts on how you can counter it's deadly machinations!

Ready, Fire, Aim!

I can't remember where I first heard this expression, but it's a good 'un. If you are hampered by perfectionism, then adopting this approach could help. Basically, whenever you have an idea you take action rather than waiting until you've thoroughly analysed and perfected it. As Nike might say - 'Just Do It'. The premise of this approach is that you can learn more from feedback once something is done than from second-guessing what's going to happen before you do it.

The Japanese have a wonderful concept they call kaizen which is probably best explained as 'continuous improvement'. An concept is trialled, feedback is monitored the project is reviewed. Based on that feedback, improvements will be made and it is trialled, monitored and reviewed again. At each stage, the improvements made may be small but they can be done quickly and efficiently and soon make a huge difference. The beauty of this approach is that something does not need to be perfect before it can be tested - quite the opposite. The four stages of the process are:

•Plan
•Do
•Check
•Review

Most of us spend most of our time at stages one and two - and some of us never even get to stage two! Adopting the kaizen philosophy can help in a number of ways:

•It gets us to take action sooner rather than later (or never!)
•It reduces pressure because nothing needs to be perfect
•It encourages us continuously to assess what is working and what isn't - so we know what we need to do next
•It allows us to be flexible, change approaches that aren't working and take advantage of new opportunities
•It means we can never fail. In the kaizen philosophy, there is no such thing as failure - only feedback

So often, we feel that if we're going to go for it and throw our heart and soul into The Thing then we have to get it right at the first attempt or we'll never have another chance. Fortunately, that's neither realistic nor true. Did you know that Slade were a skinhead band for a while when they were first trying to make it? Did you know that Bill Gates had a company called Traf-o-Data that flopped before Microsoft made him the richest man in the world?

Did you know that Abraham Lincoln lost a legislative race, two congressional races, two senatorial races and failed in an attempt to become vice-president before he was elected to office of president of the United States? As all these examples show, the people that are most successful aren't the ones who never make mistakes or experience setbacks, they're the ones that don't give up and keep changing their approach until they make it work.

Imagine a beginner comes to you for lessons on your instrument. On their first lesson you put the changes to Giant Steps in front of them and count to four at 280 beats a minute. When it all goes horribly wrong you tell them that it's clear that they're not good enough, they don't have what it takes and they should quit now - but at least they tried. That scenario is clearly unrealistic and cruel and yet so many of us find it easy to be this unrealistic and cruel with ourselves and in our expectations of what we should be able to achieve at our first attempt. What would have happened to jazz if Charlie Parker had decided he clearly wasn't cut out for music when he had a cymbal thrown at him and was laughed off the stage at that infamous jam session in Kansas City?

The point is this: nothing is ever perfect right from the start - so don't expect yourself or your musical project to be perfect initially either. Don't just give yourself permission to fail, stop thinking of success and failure altogether. Think about kaizen and generating feedback, adopt the Ready, Fire Aim approach and see what happens and talk to yourself like you would any other human being instead of your worst enemy!

In other words, just give it a go to see what happens.
http://playjazz.blog.co.uk/2010/05/20/how-to-make-sure-you-never-fail-again-8630035/