Go Big or Go Home

Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.

Alain de Botton

I learned many useful things in the school band:

· Sit up straight.

· Breathe with your diaphragm.

· Impossibly difficult music can be played with confidence after many hours of practice.

The most valuable thing I learned was that if you’re going to make a mistake, make it confidently.

Honestly, that is a lesson I am still trying to learn.

There are few things as embarrassing as playing an unplanned solo by coming in a beat early.

But a band of musicians who are afraid of making a mistake will ruin any song they attempt to play.

With courage and practice, however, an impossible piece of music can be transformed into an expressive performance that touches the emotions.

Learning anything requires the courage to make humiliating mistakes.

I have many embarrassing stories of my early attempts to speak Italian.

But I survived and now have amusing stories as a bonus.

You might be thinking, “That’s all fine and good, but I graduated many years ago.”

But the learning never stops.

Formal education is not the end of learning. It is just the beginning.

If we are not learning, we are being left behind.

Change is happening faster and faster.

The next ten years could see

· people living on Mars

· the average lifespan extended by decades

· widespread use of domestic robots

(But we probably still won’t have our flying cars.)

So how do we manage in the meantime?

If we try to play it safe, our lives will have the grace of a band of beginner musicians afraid of making embarrassing mistakes.

We don’t applaud them for their virtuosity and expressiveness. We support them for their courage and progress.

We can’t wait around to see what’s going to happen.

We must start preparing now, even though many of our plans will need to be scrapped and made again from scratch.

We can’t afford to be timid as we face the future.

But we should be prepared to be embarrassingly wrong about much of it.

The best strategy is to have strong opinions loosely held.

— Rod Pickett

Now available at Amazon: The Courageous Heart: Wisdom for Difficult Times in paperback and eBook, an Eric Hoffer Award Finalist, a must-read for anyone seeking inspiration and guidance. Get your copy today.