Are You Willing to Fail Spectacularly?

Failure has been on my mind lately. Like a lot.

I find myself out on the skinny branches of life – the best place to be in my opinion. I always coach people that SMART goals are stupid because they limit what you think is and isn’t possible. It’s when you go FAR outside of your comfort zone that you grow.

So here I am WAY out here.

Injecting raw authenticity and humor into my speeches, workshops and my coaching comes naturally to me.  People have told me that they didn’t know coaching could be so darned fun.  I like to have fun, don’t you?

I was collaborating with someone a few weeks ago and we crafted a workshop I'm going to be leading for women running for office. I’m going to teach them how to bring some comedy to the campaign trail.

As entrepreneurs we are always coming up with innovative ideas and then figuring out how to achieve them.

That’s how come I find myself on the skinny branches.

I’ve never led this workshop, so it will take something from me to think about this, inquire into it, talk to other people about it, try out my ideas on others to see if they make sense.

But I’ve got some time, because the workshop isn’t until July 17th.

NOT.

Last week while at the Quantum Leap conference for authors and speakers. I led a really fun workshop I called “Effortless Networking.”  (If you recall I HATE networking.)

I had a blast leading it. People loved it. The organizer loved it. In fact, you can listen to a testimonial from Steve Harrison right here.

Afterwards one of my fellow authors approached me because she wanted tips on how to do what I did -  inject raw authenticity and humor into her workshops.

“I’ve never been asked that before,” I replied stalling for time. (I was taught that by a former journalist.)

But then I wrote down about 5 tips and I asked her if she’d let me do some work with her to discover this for myself.

I find that discovering something talks conversations back and forth. You can’t do it in your own head with yourself because you are inside the same “four walls” of your brain.  Conversing with someone else allows for something new to arise in the space in between the two of you. She agreed.

Then it snowballed from there. At least 5 other people asked me to do the same AND the conference organizer once again pulled me up on stage to provide tips to everyone and coach someone on the spot.

It didn’t stop.

An email came in when I got home. It was from the husband of yet another author asking me to coach him through writing his book because he wants the same type of coaching.

Hello. These are those moments when the Universe is literally knocking at your door and if you aren’t listening for it, you may miss the signs.

I’ve always said: “You got to hit me over the head with a 2x4 because I’m so stubborn I miss things like this.”

Pretty sure that was a 2x4.  Thank you, Universe.

Now the real work begins. I’ve got to get out of my way. Humor and authenticity are natural for me. It’s like breathing. (it wasn’t always that way.)

What’s right there along with my excitement?

It is possible that I might fail spectacularly in pursuing this endeavor.

But I’m up for the challenge. Bigger game, bigger opportunity to fail. It’s when we are willing to “fail spectacularly” that we transform because it takes something to get out of our comfort zone.

Where are you playing the game of “failing spectacularly?”

Or are you? I’d love to know.