I took ice skating lessons as a kid. And while my ability to speed around the rink jumping and spinning is long gone, there is one lesson I remember clearly.
My classmates and I would be gliding around all smug about staying upright and in control, but our skating instructor would just shake her head.
“If you’re not falling down, you’re not trying hard enough,” she’d tell us.
At the time, it was really annoying.
And, she had a point.
Her job was to make us better skaters. And if we didn’t risk crashing to the ice in an ungainly heap, our jumps would never get higher, our spins would never get tighter.
We had to skate out of our comfort zone so we could create a new and better comfort zone.
It was true on the ice and it’s true in our businesses. Heck, it’s true in our lives. We have to take the counterintuitive step of being willing to be wrong. To do something imperfectly. Otherwise, we will never fully know what we’re capable of.
It’s also why I come back to this quote from Neil Gaiman every New Year’s.
Let’s make some epic mistakes in 2022. 😊
“Well Said Wednesday” is a blog by Barbara Govednik, Founder, Content Coach & Message Strategist of 4.23 Communication. It’s published every other Wednesday…ish.