Dare to fail?

Coaching with my incredibly sensitive and insightful coach, Rich Litvin has had an impact on me as few self development courses or lectures I have attended. And I have attended MANY! My beliefs and world views are gently challenged by Rich, and this has the power to change the way I see the world, in only one hour! Because the way I view it changes, I automatically start occurring in the world differently!

Some time ago, Rich challenged me to fail! My work (coaching is all about taking steps forward, so there is always a call to action!) was to collect a pre set number of "NOs". When I first heard it, I thought "peace of cake, bring me the real challenge!!", boy was I in for a surprise! 

When I started out trying to collect NOs, it was much harder than I thought.  It made me realize that to me, receiving a NO is synonymous to failure. OK, I did ask a waiter if I could move my table outside the restaurant and he very politely replied "No, I'm sorry, that is impossible" with a very puzzled look on his face, given that there was obviously nowhere to put the table outside the restaurant. Yet that was easy. He was a stranger, he would never see me again and let's face it, these waiters see so many "weird" people everyday, I couldn't care less if he thought I was just another one of them. 

Then the challenge started to feel uncomfortable. I started thinking of things to ask of people I know, that might get me a NO. I really longed to do it, and even though I knew it was only a "game" I still felt that getting the NO would mean I failed. The thought of asking real challenging things from my friends, my clients and even my landlord, filled me up with fear and paralyzed me. I was obviously not prepared to hear the two lettered word from them!  I am still playing the game and at times it still feels like butterflies are having a party in my stomach. 

The Bible says: Ask and it shall be given you. It never said: "Ask once and it shall be given you straight away"! As Master Coach, Steve Chandler puts it: Yes lives in the land of No! The more No's you receive, the bigger the chances to collect the so sought after Yes!

When we think failure (as in NO), we immediately put up a fight. Failure is a hard blow to our ego: "Someone said no to ME? Let me run and hide in my whole for a month!" 

The No game, or any other form of failure, are ways to take your consciousness to another level. The more you fail, the more you become resilient to it, feeling the need to hide in the whole for less and less time, until one day, failure (or No) is just another word, detached from any fighting or feelings of unworthiness. 

Have you seen Nike's commercial featuring Michael Jordan talking about his life's failures?

How many times have you failed this past month? Just for fun, are you willing to double the failure rate next month? Give yourself a REALLY challenging new years resolution and take your consciousness to the next level while you're at it!