If you’re reading this, I think it’s safe to say you may have noticed that I haven’t kept up with blogging my adventures. There’s a few reasons for that, but I won’t get into them here. Needless to say, I think it’s unfortunate that I haven’t kept up because 2009 was probably my most exciting year to date! For this year I plan to do more frequent, but smaller updates. Less self help crap, more just about my life which will probably only be interesting to smaller audience of close friends and family.

That said, I’m excited to be starting off 2010. Why so excited you ask? Well, I’m glad you did! I can tell you it’s not for any particular reason other than that I’m simply looking forward to putting into practice the things I’ve learned from my experiences in 2009. Most importantly I’m excited that I’m going to fail.

Yes, fail. There’s some logic to my madness so allow me to elaborate: There are plenty of quotes about how you can learn from failing or for how there is a silver lining to every dark cloud. I’m not going to blow hot air up your ass by regurgitating them.

What I will say is that rarely do people endeavor to do things they expect to fail at. Failure is unpleasant, it’s something most people avoid at all costs, myself included. But it is that fear that prevents us from trying new things, from experiencing new things and learning from those experiences. And it’s that fear that I most want to overcome and that most affects my decisions.

Now that’s not to say that I plan to make reckless decisions, just that I’ll put myself out in situations that I’ve always wanted to succeed in just so that I can fail in order learn what that failure is like. Most importantly to learn from the experience and reframe failure in my mind as the attainment of good knowledge rather than taking it personally or feeling weakness.

Is there something you’re afraid to fail at that you think experience would help you get over?
For me it’s meeting people, particularly initiating conversation with someone I have never met and have no particular reason to talk to. I’m sure you can imagine plenty of ways to fail at that, and I’m planning to try a whole lot of them!