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Welcome creatives! These are discussions, thoughts, case studies, interviews, and lessons about how our creativity relates to life. The host, Mr Benja, is a former video game programmer / designer for Rockstar Games, Sony Santa Monica, The 3DO Company, and others, as well as a fine artist. -- Be sure to check out the website for more.
I am currently failing.
I do that a lot.
Yes, I fail at things.
And you know what?
I like it.
I love it.
I get in there, try things out.
They don't work.
I'm happy about it.
Why is that?
Because I gladly fail and I always learn.
Like the great Bob Ross said, there
are no mistakes, only lessons.
And that's what I'm here to talk
noise with you about today on
creativity threads, life, my
relatively new for 2024 creative
podcast about all things creativity.
And we're starting off this year,
this podcast with a lot on the
idea about what do you call it?
Productivity, resolutions, goals.
That's kind of where I ended 2023
and I was rolling into 2024 with.
We'll get into a lot more of
the other type of creativity.
If you want to talk about paintings,
artists, musicians, we'll have some
interviews and things coming forth.
But for now.
I'm still rolling with the idea of
these resolutions and a lot of these
creative productivity and planning kind
of actions that I've been thinking about.
So this is how the podcast
is going to evolve.
It's about the fifth edition or fifth
version of my podcasting journey
that I'm taking you on with this,
and I'm really feeling good about it.
I won't, you know what, I failed
at the other podcast versions.
And that's how everything in
my life kind of feels like.
Um, not that I am a failure, I'm
a winner, but to become a winner,
I continued failing and that's
what we're going to discuss today.
Shout out to everybody in the chat
and always thanks for coming through.
I do this most every evening.
Some point I want to
switch to a morning format.
Maybe I'll switch to an evening.
If people are more enticed to listen
to this in the evening, I don't know,
or in the morning, I don't know, but
I want to do this in the morning.
So I'll probably change that up anyway.
Uh, the topic of failure has, has come
up quite a bit, and as I said, it was
on my mind because it's one of my 13
resolution myths, which I'm going to
be speaking more on later, but it's
a topic that comes up because people
quit way too early, way, way too early.
They don't have the time to
actually learn anything to actually
change themselves to move forward.
They just get frustrated and they quit.
Way too early.
There's an early part of the process
where you can still get in there, try
things out, understand, learn more.
Even if you're not going to continue
down that path, there's still a lot
to be gained from that early part.
And in that early part
is when people quit.
If you listen to my previous podcast,
I talked about how people quit when
they're getting into a situation.
And it's, I mean, they quit so often that
they have something called Quitter's Day.
It's the second Friday in January.
Basically, all the people that were
involved and interested in their New
Year's resolutions and setting goals,
they decided to quit two weeks in.
What does that say for the
other 50 weeks of the year?
That you should have been doing something.
So that's my premise today.
Gladly fail, always learn.
Because when you gladly fail, you
learn and you keep moving forward.
And we do these things because
there's nothing else to be done
except to continue moving forward.
And don't worry about
making noise out there.
Because the noise you make
pushes you even farther forward.
If I can get my words together here.
So check this out.
There's this idea out there that
you reach your goals or you fail.
That you make it to a certain point or
you fall on your face and you're done.
But that's not really what happens.
If you hadn't heard this before, let
me introduce you to this concept of
the fail methodology or ideology.
Think of failure as a step along
the process of learning and growing.
And there's an acronym that
can help you out with them.
Frequently apply iterative learning.
I'll go into this deeply at some
point, but just keep that in mind.
Frequently apply iterative learning.
So you can't just do it once or
twice and go about your business.
That's being frequent.
You gotta, you gotta
stay frequent with it.
You got to apply.
You can't just think about it.
Can't just talk about it.
Do you have to have some sort
of application, some sort of
pushing into the real world?
And you have to be iterative, iterative,
meaning that you're not just doing the
same thing over and over again, you're
iterating it every time through you.
Move forward a little bit.
You try something new, you experience
something slightly different.
You place upon yourself the
impetus of a slight bit of change.
Some people call it the
1 percent improvement
in your, you know what, in your,
in your experimentation and you're
trying things out, you may not
actually move that one step forward.
You may actually fall back a
little bit and that's fine.
As long as you.
Are doing what we call growing.
You're okay.
Because growing is what's going to
give you growing is you have to do
a little bit of building, acquiring,
maintaining, and releasing all these,
these are the four factors of growing.
You need to build, acquire,
maintain, and release.
So in that process, if you
lose some things, fine.
If you acquire some
things, that's cool too.
If you maintain.
Sure, just keep making sure
you're trying a little something
different and pushing on forward.
But this growth process,
it isn't always clean.
It isn't always messy.
It definitely isn't always perfect.
And when people see you from afar,
they'll think that you're failing.
But that's not what failure is about.
Becoming a failure is one thing.
That means you've just quit.
But you can be a winner.
By continuing on.
So let me get a little deep with this.
Uh, let me start jumping into some
pieces of this, but I first want to
say that that's some bad thinking,
um, that you re that, you reach
your quote unquote goal or you fail.
Don't think of it like that.
You gladly fail.
And every time you fail, every time
you try something, you're learning.
Every time you're putting
something forth, you're learning.
Every time you go into the job, think
about, okay, what can I learn this time?
Not how can I fail at
still being at this job?
Not how can I fail by not
having something ready?
As I said, I fail all
the time, and I like it.
I'm failing right now.
I'm not recording this podcast in
exactly the way that I want to, but
I'm iteratively learning, right?
And I'm applying.
I'm actually putting something out there.
So yeah, what do we have today?
So there are four things
that I thought of.
I have some examples, and I have some,
some quips, some research, and all that.
But I want to start with how this came up.
Um, I was plugging away at something.
And I was feeling a little upset,
a little frustrated, perturbed.
I was getting tired of things,
but I just kept on going.
I was like, you know what, let me add
this to, let me add this to the situation.
Let me try changing this up.
Let me move this over here.
Let me let go of this notion.
And in the process of doing this,
after a couple weeks maybe, I got
to the point and someone said, you
know what, you're very resilient.
I actually didn't like that
as a compliment at the time.
I don't even know if it was meant
to be a compliment, but the person
said, you're very resilient.
That kind of bugged me because
I didn't want to be seen
as resilient of all things.
That just, to me, that just felt
like I was taking a bunch of
crap and, and putting up with it.
Coming from, coming from them.
That's what it sounded like.
So I just pushed on forward
and kind of nodded my head.
But later on, I realized
how far I had come.
I talked about Dr.
Benjamin Hardy before, thinking
about the gap in the game.
Do you consider the gap that
you still have or the gain that
you've actually accomplished?
And when I look back at the
gains that I have accomplished,
I was actually kind of happy.
I was like, you know what?
I did get this far.
I did make it to this level.
I am now able to accomplish this
with less effort than I did before.
I have grown.
I have learned.
I have evolved.
I've gotten better.
And I was glad about that.
So regardless of what that person meant.
I felt better because I
did something remarkable.
And once again, we'll talk
about being remarkable.
It's that phase in you where
you're, you've actually accomplished
something to the point where the
world has to make a mark about it.
They have to say something.
They have to remark.
They have to offer something because
your energy is just that powerful that
you've sparked some sort of response.
So now with this framing,
you're always winning.
The world doesn't teach us to be this way.
The world teaches us to get mad,
get upset, and there, there's a
place for anger and negativity.
I'll cover that in another one too.
But they just want you to get
mad and buy into some idea.
But I have four things I want to say
about pushing forward and gladly failing.
So I'll start this with point one.
You actually shouldn't reach your goal.
You should fail.
Because if you reach your goal, that means
it was probably too small to begin with.
Your goal should be just a
little bit out of your reach.
Your goal should be a little bit
farther than you can comfortably tackle.
Your goal should be just a little
bit farther than you can stretch for.
That means you're going to have to
drop some things, fall on your face,
be a little dirty, upset some people.
Go along, go about your business.
It's not grand enough and growth by
definition means that you're going
to be doing something bigger, better,
stronger, faster, whatever, more advanced,
more evolved than you were before.
So you should be coming up a
little short, but that's fine.
According to you, as far as
everyone else is concerned, as
far as the world is concerned.
You'll still have gained.
So it doesn't matter so much.
Does it matter if you sold
all your paintings or not?
If you plan to sell all your paintings
and you actually did, did you succeed?
Or maybe you sold all your paintings,
but you didn't sell all your prints.
Or maybe you sold all your paintings,
but you didn't sell them out in one week.
And you were aiming to sell
them all out in one week.
And if you did sell all
your things out in one day.
Maybe you should have
had more things to do.
Maybe you should have not
just sold them all in one day.
Let's keep, let's move sales
to another, another arena.
Let's say you're used to selling out.
Maybe you sell them out, but you didn't
do as much marketing, but you only sold
to the people you wanted to, but you
got a certain amount of praise for it.
There are other metrics to quantify.
So don't get caught too much in numbers.
Get caught up in the idea that
you're failing to grow and doing
something bigger and better,
stronger and faster every time.
So that's point number one.
Point number two.
I already kind of mentioned
this, but failing is learning.
At every step along the way, you
want to take something that you're
not excellent at, and try to excel.
Along the way, you're
going to learn some things.
And this has actually
amazed me in my life.
How no matter what I'm doing, no matter
how mundane or silly the task, or how
elementary I think it is, I still end
up finding a way to learn something
from everything that I put my mind to.
So even if I'm cooking eggs.
I wonder, wait a minute, why did this
person's eggs taste better than mine?
Are they using better eggs?
That's a possibility.
So I cook eggs in the morning.
I'm thinking to myself, huh,
I failed at making great eggs.
What did I do that they did differently?
Did they use a different type of butter?
Different type of pan?
These things actually start
to make a difference if
you're really looking into it.
At one point, someone told me they
added whole milk to their eggs
to make them a little fluffier.
That blew my mind.
I had no idea.
Or if you add a slight
amount of hot sauce.
This is one I picked up.
Just a slight amount of
hot sauce into the mix.
Nobody will be able to taste the
hot sauce, but they'll be able to
make a distinction with the flavor.
And that's pretty great.
That everything you do, you're failing
at and learning all at the same time.
I think I'll make a fifth
point out of this later, but
I'll get to that in a second.
If you're going about trying
things out, learning, failing,
then you're growing just by nature,
and it'll never stop.
It will never end.
You keep thinking that you're going
to become an expert at something,
you're going to master something.
Well, by the time you get around to
mastering anything, if you've been
around long enough, you'll notice that
the world starts to change around you.
You may have been the master
at C programming, then
suddenly C Sharp shows up.
Like, oh, okay.
Or maybe you were the master at,
or maybe you were the master at,
you know, doing, doing hardcore systems
and hardware programming, and suddenly
network programming becomes a thing.
That actually happened to a lot of people.
Suddenly it's like, oh crap, everything
I've learned about hardware programming
is changing over to this new format.
I need to learn other technologies.
Even for just the web programmers, Java
and JavaScript became much bigger things.
Now you had to become an expert at that.
And you're continually learning and
failing, but you know people will look
at you and say that guy's a winner,
or that lady knows how to win, because
they keep going, they keep pushing
at it, and they learn all the time.
Now you can do this and be happy or
sad about it, but if you're happy
about it, you'll probably end up
in a better place in the future.
Alright, point number three.
Failure only sets in when you stop.
I mentioned this a little bit before, but
if you try again, how can you have failed?
How can you really have
failed, or be a failure?
If you're still trying, if you're still
doing it, you just haven't reached
your, your focal point of energy yet.
You haven't reached the proper
alignment of your energy with
what you're doing just yet.
You haven't failed.
Can you move faster?
Yeah, sure.
Everyone can.
Can you move with more surety?
Of course.
But that's part of the learning process.
Sitting down and not failing is a problem.
I used to go salsa dancing, right?
I was tearing up the dance floor in salsa.
And one thing, and once again, this is
another realization I had, I would get on
the floor, start messing up dancing badly.
And I realized at some point that I was
trying to dance with all the beginners.
And at one point I was, I was
so in the mood for dancing.
I was like, well, let me just go ask
for a dance with, you know, this,
this person that's really good.
They had all the right clothes.
You have to have a certain outfit
when you're going salsa dancing.
I wasn't at that level yet.
They had all the right
clothes, the right shoes.
They had the right, they knew all
the words to the music so they
could kind of sing and hum along.
When the breaks were coming, they
knew when to break down their
dance to a different step and
different beat, different level.
But I was a beginning salsa dancer at the
time and I didn't know what was going on.
So I was just kind of flubbing around.
And I wanted to stay winning, right?
So I didn't push myself, but I was so
into the vibe and happy this one night.
I was like, man, I'm, I, this is fun, man.
I'm having fun dancing.
The music's great.
Friends are out here, you know, get a
little wines, people dancing, great.
Keeping them time to the music and meeting
new people just in the, in the mode.
Right.
So I asked someone to dance
who was far better than me, far
out, out of my dancing league.
And she gave me a look
like, fine, let's go.
And normally the higher level dancers,
the dudes, at least, you know, they
would ask the ladies to the dance
floor and they would go, go to work.
They'd go to town doing their thing.
But when you're a lower level
dancer, they kind of give you this,
I don't want to call it a pity dance.
Cause that's not what it is.
They do, they dance a very simple dance
so that you don't seem outclassed, right?
But I had so much fire
in me at the moment.
I was like, no, we're not about
to go with that dance down for me.
I'm about to come up a level.
So I'm doing bad spins.
I'm off time.
Um, I'm doing my cross body leads.
I'm doing my alamans.
I'm doing all kinds of stuff.
I'm, I'm just, I'm just out there
flowing, doing bad, but flowing.
So what's funny is she's
such a good dancer.
She thought it was like a challenge to
keep up with my bad dancing, which was
funny that I could sense her kind of
doing this, she's like, wait a minute.
Oh, left hand, right hand.
Okay.
You're doing this now.
And I could see her being amused
at me struggling to be a bad ass.
And I was like, Oh, this is great.
We're having fun here.
I'm just being a bad dancer.
She's being a badass trying to keep up
with my bad dancing or, you know, just
not, um, walk off the floor or whatever.
And we had fun.
I was breaking it down.
She was following the lead.
We were doing the thing and
I caught up and got better.
I was like, okay, let me try this.
Okay.
That works.
That doesn't work.
In fact, I was even talking
to her all on the floor.
I'm like, Hey, listen.
Uh, I'm going to try some things.
Let me know how it works
and let me know what to do.
And she's like, cool.
I tried some things.
It didn't work.
She's like, Hey, next time, hold your
hand this way and tap my shoulder.
So I know I'm like,
boom, I'm learning now.
That was early on.
A lot of people would have waited for
a lesson, waited for the classroom.
I'm out there just failing
on the dance floor.
I don't know what happened to
me in terms of status that night
because I didn't give a crap.
But months down the line, I
would just walk on the floor
and start doing whatever.
And people started to recognize,
like, this dude goes in.
This dude's got the moves.
I was gladly failing.
I didn't even mean to.
You learn, you keep going,
and you push forward.
It was great.
And yes, if I would have stopped
trying to fail, my skills
would have been extremely low.
And what did I lose for quote unquote
failing in this, in these moments?
Nothing.
Some people may have thought it
was shameful or whatever, but
you just kind of laugh it off.
And laughing it off is important
because I don't know where we get this
stigma from being labeled a failure.
Um, but it's a bad one.
In fact, let me interject this here.
I was on the web looking at a very well
mined, it's a, it's a psychology website
about better wellness for your mind.
And I saw an article by Dr.
Kendra Cherry referring to signs
you have a fear of failure.
So if you see any of these signs
or feeling any of these signs
in you, you know you may be
dealing with a fear of failure.
Now this isn't an all or nothing thing.
All of us kind of feel these things
to some extent or some degree.
But if you feel them, realize that you may
be, not always, but may be experiencing
a little bit of fear of failure.
And you don't have to run away from it.
You can try to address
it and see what happens.
You might learn something.
So the first thing Dr.
Cherry advises, or not advises, but
she says that um, that you might be
looking for or feeling is anxiety.
If you feel anxiety, you might
have a fear, fear of failure.
A lot of us get this stage fright,
we're not sure what to ask somebody,
we're, we got, we got a little bit of
trepidation going on about something.
And there's fear of the unknown, fear
of failure, fear of repercussions.
Whatever.
There's a lot of fears involved there, but
one of them could be a fear of failure.
But if you change it into a
fear of learning, you shouldn't
have a fear of learning and you
can start to exit that one out.
Like, Hey, I'm going to do
this and I'm going to learn.
I think that'll give you a
lot better resilience there.
Another one is anxiety.
Just mission anxiety.
Sorry.
I meant avoidance.
Another one's avoidance.
When you start trying to avoid things
like, why are you avoiding that?
Are you afraid you're going to fail?
Are
you afraid you're going
to lose out on something?
What are you avoiding?
A lot of people just don't like
the idea of being confrontational.
Because they think something might happen.
Um, I'm of the mindset that you just
get in there and you confront anyway.
I don't mean confront
in terms of being mean.
I mean confront, hey, let's bring this
up, let's talk about it, let's go for it.
And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
And if you're right,
that's cool too, whatever.
Or if I need to learn something,
we have this avoidance in general,
most situations you shouldn't avoid.
You should try to take them on in some
way or form, some shape or fashion.
Are we avoiding calling somebody?
Hey, throw out a text first.
Are we avoiding the text practice
with a friend and say, Hey, I need
to talk to somebody about this.
What's a good thing to start off saying?
Ask chat GPT if you have to.
But just find ways to take a step forward.
Like we were saying that incremental
learning frequently applied.
And then another thing that might
be a sign of that is helplessness.
When we feel helpless, we feel
like we can't do anything, but
we can always do something.
We can always do something
to change our mindset.
If we have a field of fear of failure,
it's like, I can't do anything.
That's that all or nothing thinking
that that's a problem with the same
problem that people say, when you
either reach your goal or you fail,
that's that all or nothing thing.
And life doesn't work in all
or nothing most of the time.
Most things are shades,
gradients, spectrums.
They're not black and white.
So get rid of the all or nothing
thinking and stop worrying about
so much about avoiding and being
helpless and having anxiety.
Or being powerless.
Another one, indecisiveness.
If you're indecisive, you
can't decide whether to do X.
Or Y, or Z, or what's
gonna be the right choice.
This is common.
A lot of people just don't know.
When you're indecisive, and there's tons
of studies on each of these factors, when
you're indecisive, you can fix that a
lot of times just by making a decision.
Just deciding to make that small step.
Just deciding to do something.
And then if it's wrong, it's wrong.
If it's right, it's right.
Similar thing with some of the others.
If you just go ahead and make the
decision, light the fuse, More
often than not, you'll be okay.
Especially if other people
understand where you're coming from.
Then you won't have as much of a
problem with so called Indecisiveness.
In fact, sometimes you don't
even need to make a decision.
You can let somebody else decide.
Find a way to maybe literally
roll the dice, flip a coin,
find something that works, find, um,
you know, incremental ways to test,
etc.
Another feeling is the feeling
that you're out of control,
that you have no agency here.
You're just.
Being pushed along by the world.
This is one that actually bothered me
quite a bit, where I felt I was being
pushed around, and then I started
to think to myself, why do I feel
like I'm always being pushed around
in these certain job situations?
It's because I've had a fear of failure.
If you push in your own direction and
decide you want to do something, and
then it fails, Then all of a sudden
you're like, Oh crap, I failed.
I messed up.
I'm now I'm in a worse situation,
but when you're in control, you're in,
you're okay with failing or you should be.
At least
the feeling of being in control.
You usually start small with this.
Start with the small arena of control.
Find a little something you can
take hold of and bend to your will.
Find a little something that you
can become the master master of.
They can, uh, be the
master of your own domain.
So yeah, those are, those
are what she mentioned, Dr.
Carey, as being, you know, uh, as being
signs of if you are failing or not, or
if you're, if you have a fear of failure.
You know, along with that, you
might, there are feelings of
status, not wanting to feel left
out, you have concerns of status.
There are other markers here, but
you know, or maybe you don't know,
when you have a fear of failure.
But maybe you've conditioned
yourself to just not like failing.
Maybe it bothers you.
That goes back to the
gap in the game thinking.
Keep on with your, your successes.
The little ones.
Not whether you've had the entire thing
be a success, but how far have you gotten?
How far have you come?
What can you be grateful for
in your attempts and learning?
And the next major point.
Point number four.
Maybe the result has changed.
This is an interesting one because
a lot of people assume that you
failed because you didn't hit
your goal the way you should've.
And we went over the other three points.
That you shouldn't reach your goal.
But if you know, it should always,
it should always be bigger than you
can reach to fails to learn failures
when you only stop, now you have
a consideration to make, maybe you
fail because the result has changed.
And this is quite possible if
you're pivoting and trying to
get to the exact right place.
If someone asks you, Hey, I thought
you'd be out of school by now.
Well, what if the result changed?
What if you're like, um, you know what?
I spent a year, went overseas,
got some opportunities, and that's
why I'm not finished school yet.
I spent a year doing this.
The result changed.
It's like, oh, okay.
Now they're in their head.
They're still thinking, man, you failed,
but you shouldn't worry about that.
You should be thinking, yes, I
did what the hell I wanted to do.
I pivoted where I needed to.
And now I'm here.
Obviously, the results shouldn't
change just because you run
up against some problems.
You should be able to push through some
issues and get to where you want to be.
But a lot of times, along the
way, we start to learn things.
Like, hey, wait a minute.
I thought I was supposed
to be doing it this way.
I need to be doing it this way to
get to where I really want to be.
And the goal is usually
often arbitrary anyway.
The
goal is often some arbitrary number
that we just plucked out of the sky.
So when you get closer to it,
Maybe you do need to change the
results, adjust the metrics.
Don't lower the bar.
Don't lower the target.
Let's be clear here, because
you shouldn't do that.
But if the goal actually adjusts
and changes, if you alter it or it's
modified, or it can bring better
gains if you behave a certain way, or
treat it a certain way, that's valid.
Don't lower the bar.
Don't lower the target.
Don't shy away from the challenge,
but realize when there's something
that might need to change.
And you'll see this in corporations
a lot and it pisses everybody off
because they always think that
management is doing something stupid
and corporate management is stupid.
But a lot of times they're changing the
goal post and the goal because they found
something better that works in the moment.
You should do that too with your own life.
So when the result changes, that's fine.
Let's say after, you know, you
say you're going to be high.
Oh, we're talking about learning.
Um, let's say somebody asked
you, Hey, you're supposed to
be finished with school by now.
Say, Hey, listen, I wouldn't
decide to get my master's degree.
This got so good to me
that I wanted to stay.
I need to stay in college.
There's more I need to
accomplish and learn.
I got into a thesis program
at Michigan state university.
True story.
Um, I learned that there was
a lot about computer science.
I didn't really understand true story.
I figured that if I got a master's
degree, I would be much more inclined
to really understand the ins and
outs and nuts and bolts of this.
And I'll get an education that
I wasn't finding the proper
resources for on my own.
True story.
So if the result actually changes,
In fact, that result that changed
may have actually grown and gotten
bigger, which keeps you even farther
away from, quote unquote, succeeding.
So I was failing even more,
intentionally, because I made
a bigger goal along the way.
And I had a fifth point, but
I didn't write the note down
and I forgot what it was.
Doggone it.
It'll have to stay for another one.
When I write this out at some point,
I'll, I'll put it down and we can all
discuss it later and be happy about it.
So, yeah, it's, it's very strange,
this idea that you can fail and grow.
It's not a common idea.
The, the prop, the common literature
out there is a lot of, you're
going to end up with two camps.
The grit camp.
That's like, just work harder,
bang your head, keep going.
And that's your David Goggins types.
Props to David Goggins.
I like David Goggins.
Props to Alex Hormozy.
I like Alex Hormozy.
But I think their message gets confused
a lot of times, where it's just burn
yourself down to a nub, you know, damage
yourself trying to work super hard.
And they just give this
advice that's very headstrong.
And I get it, but the way it comes off,
comes off wrong to a lot of people.
Making a note to edit myself before the
internet big brother gods come at me.
Change the statement I
said a little while ago.
That's how I'm learning right there
because I actually started posting
so much and posting so freely that
the system gave me a little pushback
and was like, yeah, we're not gonna,
we're not going to be promoting this.
And you learn, I learned,
and I said, on the other side of the,
the grit and push hard, the other
side of that is, Hey, just sit down.
Don't worry.
You're okay.
Everything's fine.
You're happy.
You don't need to, you
don't need to grow at all.
You're fine.
Just the way you are.
Had a complete podcast about
that a couple of days ago.
Check it if you'd like,
and we'll go from there.
So, yeah, I mean, I have
plenty of stories about.
Pushing forward and failing and learning.
One that I want to mention is there was a
pretty awesome manager at Rockstar Games.
I usually don't mention the companies
by name, but I want to mention this one.
Um, pretty awesome management
supervisor, director type person.
They showed up one day with the,
with the advice that they were
going to get things in order.
And this was one of the most
chaotic times I'd ever been working.
This person said, Hey,
why are we doing this?
Well, we're doing this because of X,
Y, and Z, and we have all the reasons.
That director person looked at
us and said, all right, we're
changing this, that, and that.
And we were like, uh, what?
And we're all thinking in our
heads, this guy's a moron.
I know he's talking about
send us all into a tizzy.
We're bumping into this where
we're missing deadlines.
We're breaking things, but we are
moving fast two weeks down the line.
Everybody's stressed.
Everybody's upset.
No one knows what's going on.
All of a sudden more changes come in.
Try this, move this around, update this.
And it's failure after
failure, after failure.
And we keep wondering,
where is this all leading?
And then at one point,
it starts to sink in.
That this failure process is a part of it.
And I'm talking to this director
guy, and he's explaining,
yeah, we need to find out.
We need to know.
How are you going to know?
Try it out and let it happen.
It's like, well, they're going
to get mad at They don't get
mad at the badness happening.
They get mad that something is
upsetting them, but they're, they're
still okay with things moving forward.
You fix it the next day and
you keep going from there.
Don't disable anybody's work,
but understand that you have to
push forward in a certain way.
And we started to get it.
We're like, Oh, okay.
It's like this.
It's like this.
And what's funny is we'd even
done this on a smaller scale
with the team I was working on.
We'd done this on a smaller scale, but.
And we were proud of what we did,
but this person came in and kicked it
in overdrive and we were like, holy
crap, this is how you start failing.
You fail fast and fail often.
And it really moved us to
create bigger and better things.
Like if you think of the story of in
the Bible of the talents, where the,
the different people got the different
talents and they said, well, what are
we going to do with these talents?
And the whole idea was to grow the
talents and the person that sat
there and didn't grow their talents.
That person was the one that was shunned,
not the person that risked their talents.
You got to risk it.
Sounds completely reckless, but most of
the things that we get into, if we're just
talking about failing are, are minuscule,
their mind games, their little social
status games that don't actually matter
when you point out what you've actually
brought forth, that is what's important.
I'm actually have to do a little
bit of research on certain
things before I continue.
Cause there's this.
This concept that I, I want
to mention here, that's not
necessarily, this is a management
concept that I want to bring up.
Okay, no, I won't bring that up.
That's a little too deep right now.
Um, I was going to talk about the
Peter principle, but that's not
exactly what I'm referring to,
so I won't bring that up here.
You can look that up on
your own time if you'd like.
But yeah, this fearless, this
ability to not be afraid of failure.
And embracing it, enjoying it,
understanding, learning, loving.
It's going to cause you
to be uncomfortable.
That's just what it is.
Cause that's what true growth is.
Be a little uncomfortable, fail, drop
the ball, move forward, understand,
nod your head, go about your business,
square up against the big
issue and see what you can do.
And the big issue is within you
keep failing, keep learning.
I remember the words of Bob Ross.
There are no mistakes, only lessons.
As long as you keep going,
keep growing your talents.
You'll be good.
Remember the fail ideology,
frequently apply iterative learning,
and that's going to do it for this one.
Thanks you all for joining us.
Speaking of failing, man, uh,
now I can reflect a little bit.
I actually didn't want to
do this podcast tonight.
Um, we're just talking noise now.
Podcast is over.
You can go home, but.
Yeah, I actually didn't want
to do this podcast tonight.
I was looking at something.
I, I S I slept too late.
I was supposed to take a nap
that turned into much of my day.
Now my sleep is going to be
messed up for the next day.
And I thought, you know what,
this podcast isn't as important
as some other things I'm doing.
Maybe I should focus on that.
Maybe I should, you know what?
Just get in there,
scribble out some notes.
You've got enough notes on this.
See how, how well you can flow,
see how well your practice has.
See how far your practice has brought you.
See how comfortable you
feel talking about this.
And that's where, that's where
I kind of felt with this one.
So I wasn't gonna do it and uh, I did it.
I think I learned something about
myself and the planning of this.
Uh, what I need to work on.
Something I can improve.
Something I can let go.
Making little notes here, I like
that part, I don't like that part.
So yeah, um.
Here's what's going to
happen with this podcast.
So right now we're in the third week
of January going into the fourth week
planning for February, what we're going
to do is we're going to start cycling
more, more variety into the podcast.
This is about creativity.
And as I said, we started strong
on the whole idea of creativity
and, um, resolutions and
creating the world that you want.
It's kind of a vibe I was
on from 2022 and 2023.
So just carrying that into
2024, the websites up, I'm, I'm
building the community right now.
So you'll start to see
more of that content.
I'm going to start inserting ads in
here and it's going to be a whole thing.
So I'm having fun with it.
Definitely learning shout out to all the
listeners, shout out to everybody who's
followed along and helped me with this.
And shout out to Theo from Show vs.
Business.
Uh, learning a lot from that guy.
And I think we learn
a lot from each other.
If you don't have somebody you can
learn from and get that whole iron
sharpens iron type of living, then that's
something I would definitely recommend.
Not necessarily a mentor, not
necessarily somebody you can
teach, but just somebody who is a
contemporary of yours in some arena.
A lot of people don't like the idea of
friendly competition, but yeah, get, get
in a mood or a mode with somebody that you
can go on a back and forth with, where you
can both learn from each other or maybe
not even one person, maybe a group, find
yourself a little mastermind of some sort.
Let's see, what else is going on?
Um, somebody just asked me recently if
I was still making any art, man, I've
really slowed down the art because after
the pandemic, my results kind of changed.
As I said before, uh, had
had ideas for making some.
Some events, some new types
of paintings, but they're not
fitting into the flow right now.
So it's had to take a
little bit of a backseat.
It's something I really,
really want to get back into.
I know a lot of you people like the
art, but it just wasn't moving me.
As much as I wanted to and what was more
important to me than making paintings
or making art was moving forward, was
having my energy continue to move forward.
So could I have stayed
a hundred percent in it?
Could I have made that my 20
percent focus, my 4 percent focus?
I could have, but I don't
know that it would have gotten
me where I wanted to get.
So.
I'll come back to it.
Definitely.
The idea for painting was always to
be something I would do when I was
in my old age and I'm not, I'm not
considering myself old yet, so still
got plenty of time for it, but if
you're looking for something, I do have
prints available at the 8bitcubist.
com and I'm going to start
putting out some more designs
for the creative study lounge.
You can find all this stuff on my
website, uh, my personal website, mrbenja.
com.
I have all the links up there.
And for more of this, you can find
that on creativitythreadslife.
com.
So yeah, what I want to do
though, is I want to know what
you're feeling, what you're, what
you're feeling for the new year.
Um, Some, the first person got
upset for me for saying that,
like, why are you saying new year?
Like, all right, there we go.
We've hit that point.
So let me know what you're thinking
about in terms of setting up
your new year, setting up your
goals, setting up your thoughts.
I really want to know what
you think about what you're
hearing in and pushing forward.
I don't just want to be on here talking.
I'm also going to be adding
interviews to the mix.
So those of you who are asking
about Discussions and having
live streamed interviews.
We're definitely going to keep doing that.
I want to get some people back on
that I have from the old podcast.
And get them back on maybe talk a little
more noise, but we're going to keep it
pushing because it's all about creativity,
art, design, development and the like,
making sure that not just not trying to be
the best you, but trying to be better and
pushing really far to see what that is.
You don't know what the best you is.
The best you is the best you can
do pushing forward, making those
mistakes, failing, learning,
adjusting, continuing to move on.
Speaking of moving on,
that's going to be it for me.
And this one come back next week
and I'll have more for you, Mr.
Benjes.
Oh gosh.
I almost said the last podcast name.
That's like writing the last year's year
that the last year's a date on the check.
And you should be
writing the current year.
Well, that's a screw up.
All right.
Well, this is creativity
threads life with your host, Mr.
Benja.
Thank you all for joining us.
Please be sure to subscribe,
like, and definitely share on
actually, you know what, instead
of all that, throw me a comment.
I want to hear what you're thinking.
Throw me a comment on the website.
If you're not on the website and
you're just on a podcast app, okay,
go ahead and subscribe, throw a like
there, throw up some stars, whatever,
but if possible, throw me a comment.
I want to know that somebody is
out there, um, with these thoughts
and actually responding back.
I think the responses are the
best part of social media.
It keeps us socially connected.
So that's what I'm looking
for and everything else.
I appreciate as well.
So thank you very much.