The Most Important Skill You'll Ever Learn

Aspire to Failure

If you know you're going to succeed, you have nothing to learn. It doesn't take much courage or dedication to do something with no risk of failure.

Failure is the path to success. Mistakes teach us, and as long as we protect ourselves from making mistakes, we insulate ourselves from learning. Babies don't learn to walk until they have fallen on their butts a lot.

But there's a reason we are terrified of certain things and not others. I'm not talking about the sharp panicky fear of cliff jumping or the hot alarm of danger. I'm talking about the looming, queasy feeling of something we aren't dealing with, the trailing ghost we refuse to turn and face, even though we know it's there.

You Care Because It's Important

You know you're doing something significant when you're a little nervous: playing a game you might lose, learning a skill you look bad at, meeting a person you have to impress. That uncertainty is a good thing.

It means you care, which itself means this thing is important to your life on some level.

You won't bother coming up with excuses for why you can't go skydiving if it's not important to you. But when "I can't do that because..." becomes a mantra, you have something you need to face.

The ghost is unnerving because it stands between you and the place you want to go--really the only place you can go. You must face it or you just wander around in the valley where you already know all the rocks and trees, putting off the inevitable, sometimes forever, because of the looming shade at the top of the pass.

Embrace Discomfort

The solution is simple: accept that sometimes you will be uncomfortable. Accept that you will be scared, that you will mess up, look stupid, be rejected, beaten, broken, even injured.

And understand that there is nothing wrong with any of that. It doesn't mean you are less or stupid. It is simply feedback.

All humans will be forced into uncomfortable situations. Most people avoid them as long as possible. These people take a very long time to learn, if they ever do. Many face the situations but fight back instead of learning. Very few people seek out these uncomfortable experiences. Those who do deal with their fears quickly and move on to greater ones.

If you can master the skill of being out of your element, you can do anything. It is the key to rapid, directed growth. It allows you to constantly learn.

Mistakes and mess-ups are simply feedback. Accept discomfort into your life as you might accept a rain storm: it's cold and miserable, but afterwards come the flowers.

If you're not doing and seeking experiences that make you queasy on a regular basis you've become complacent. Take a dance class. Write a public blog. Teach a skill. Always seek new frontiers.

Stay comfortable with that discomfort. That is one of the most essential skills a person can have.

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Photo Credit: JD Hancock on Flickr