Success is normally found in a pile of mistakes...

We usually see success when it's been polished up a little like a diamond. It's pretty, and everyone wants it. That's where the problem comes for those seeking success. Often they've been deluded by appearances that success starts out looking like the finished product.

Nope. Success, as I have written before, is messy. You'll bump into things, make mistakes that'll have you cringing with embarrassment at times. You'll waste time on dumb ideas, get distracted, and waste more time. But, that's all part of the journey. 

Eventually you'll be getting better at what you are doing. You'll look in your pile of mistakes and see some flecks of gold, or diamonds. You'll figure how you got them, and start improving the way you work. In time, you'll have a great understanding of what you are doing, and progress will come much easier. More gold and diamonds. Nice.

Just to give you an example, when I was trying to grow my old investigative business, we went through many iterations of trying to keep up with the dictated reports that were submitted by investigators. This was expensive due to the overnighting of tapes, and on occasion we had to spend a ton of time looking for a missing tape. Then a woman who was working transcribing tapes asked why I didn't have a medical dictation system.

The reason? I didn't know what it was. But the system allowed all that dictation to be done via telephone every night. No more audio tapes, no more daily inbound express packages. In retrospect it seemed crazy we hadn't looked into it. But we didn't know such systems existed. But fixing that mistake was easily worth over a $100k per year. A nice additional profit.

You can improve the process by doing plenty of studying beforehand, but as my example illustrates, you'll probably still screw up. That's good. Because your success is going to be in that pile of mistakes. Just keep looking. 

Good luck!

Never give up your right to be wrong, and be sure to give others that right too.

   Why would we want the right to be wrong? Don't we want the right to be right? No, if the world is going to move forward, we want the right to be amazingly wrong. 

   Imagine if the rule for learning to walk was pass or fail. If you could not walk at the right moment, you were fitted with leg braces and sent off - consigned to the label of "non-walker" forever. Perhaps this seems an exaggeration. But we do this with people all the time. 

   The key to mastery is effort and time. For some, mastery takes longer. But the end result may actually be superior expertise compared to the person for whom it came easily. Why? Because we learn from our mistakes. All those blunders provide an information set on what to do in the future.

   For the best levels of expertise we need to embrace more than one path to success. We can't just pick the front runners early and "label" the rest as incapable. But, we like our human filing cabinets. This person is one of "these", that person is one of "those". It's neat and clean. Except when it's us being stuck into a particular drawer or onto a certain shelf.

   Because in our heart we know it's rubbish. The whole reason we like the "filing cabinets" is because figuring people out is messy. Many of us are more bright than our transcript lets on. Most of us have a topic we are interested in, but are too timid to pursue. So we'd under perform on knowledge but over perform on interest.

  It's worth it to evaluate each other with greater depth. In a world going shallow, go deep. Be willing to accept mistakes from both yourself and others. Pursue mastery right through a barrage of errors. Everytime we fail we get a bit better. 

  Suddenly we can be better than the best, a breakthrough occurs and we are soaring. After sloppy results and discouraging reviews, we jump ahead. We discover something new that benefits the world. A moment which requires our patience and that of those around us.

  Never give up. Never give up your right to be wrong, and be sure to give others that right too.