We love the comfort of the known. It is a place of belonging. It is a place of security.
But to innovate, we must have the courage to try new things that carry with them the risk of failure. To risk failure is uncomfortable. To be an innovator, we must become Comfortable being Uncomfortable.
To walk this journey into the unknown, we must confront our Fear of Failure. For many of us, this fear is deeply embedded on our psyche.
If we are honest, most of our entire traditional educational system is shaped by this fear. To fail is the worst outcome of the experience, to fail a test leads to failing a class, which leads to rejection and expulsion from a educational institution. That rejections can then leads to failure in life and society, our ultimate rejection our ultimate shame.
The teaching process, then, is often motivated by this fear.
But inherent in this process is the understanding that failure is not only possible, but expected. It is through the analysis of that failure that we gain insight that empowers the creative learning process.
By creating short, fast, Learning Cycles the cost of these failures is minimized while the learning that comes from them is maximized.
It is essential that there is support and trust in this process.