PERMISSION to FAIL – SHAME produces WILLPOWER! – 019

Leverage shame to be epic – AUDIO NSFW

What is it about us, people? What is it about us? What is it about us that we innately are too hard on ourselves? That’s the topic for today. And we have come to this topic because I had an experience with my son yesterday. I am the type of dad that goads and encourages my children to do more than usual activities outside. Let’s just put it that way.

Let’s just say I don’t mind adding a little bit of risk, but what I really mean to say is I don’t mind adding excitement but with excitement comes a little bit more risk. And so for those that know and have seen me do these things before, like, my kids are always riding their bikes outside. We just love to have kids that are always outside just like you and I were back in the 70s and 80s, guys. 

We grew up outside, right? So I love having my kids outside and they love riding their bikes and I was an avid bike rider. I still have my bike right here, but I don’t ride as much but I love doing wheelies. So I love doing wheelies and I have shown both my children how to do wheelies on their bikes. Now, they’re practicing these things and obviously whenever you do anything new like this, you can make mistakes, you can get hurt, you can fall back. 

I’m also the type of Appa,-I’m also the type of father when they’re riding their bikes and I see a stone, and I see a board… let’s build a ramp. And so, some of guys have seen that in some of the previous videos but I’ve created a ramp for my kids as well. 

I like adding excitement and obviously thereby adding just a little bit of risk. But I had an event that happened yesterday with my son. And he was practicing his wheelies and he was practicing and, you know, whenever you practice and you try to push the limit just a little bit, you’re going to come back.  

Now, he’s had a couple of these where he’s gone too high and he’s learned how to pop off his seat, plant his two feet on the ground, and, you know, the bike stands up…and you’re good. But sometimes you pop up too fast and you end up falling. 

Well, in this particular occasion, what it was really interesting and I watched the entire thing unfold is that he popped up, it was just a little bit too far, but he leaned into it, right? And this is when you know you’re just, you’re gonna make that break, right? You’re gonna make that–you’re gonna do that little risky thing and it could end up spelling disaster for you but man, if you stick it, if you stick it, you’ll come out and you’ll be a champion type of deal. 

Anyway, it didn’t work out like that, guys. So he popped up, went a little too far, he leaned into it, gave it a little bit more juice, and then unfortunately, came right down hard on his front wheel. And so he came back up and then like jerk boom. Slam. Front wheel down, okay? So front wheel down coming from a wheelie and he flies over the handlebars, hits the left side of his body on the handlebars, you know, crash, crash roll, roll, aw, aw, big deal.

And for me, as a father, I watched this and I don’t rush through a side, I watch it, and I could see he was clearly in pain. Clearly in pain. But more than that he was shamed. I could see he was holding back the tears from the pain of that fall and he’s immediately grabbing his bike, walking opposite direction of me so I can’t see his face, and I catch up to him. I grab the bike. I put my hand on I stop, and I say, “Son, you don’t need to get back on the bike. You don’t need to get back on this bike.” 

And he’spushing, he’s not looking at me because he knows that he catches my eyes and I know this too. He knows if he catches my eyes, it’s coming out. And I hold then I say, “Bro, you don’t need to get back on the bike, just chill. You just fell off, man. Just chill. Just chill.” And he still, kind of, tugging and trying to get away, right? And then finally he gives in, “I can’t do it, Appa.” I’m gonna–bro, I’m gonna stand there. I’mma kneel there until you give in. 

And he turns around and he looks at me, and I said,“Bro, I know it hurt, man. I know it hurt, bro. It’s okay.  You can just chill.” And when he hears those words, he immediately goes, “Appa, it hurts so bad.” And he comes, and he crumples in my arms and I give him a huge hug. I put the bike down, and I tell him it’s all right. 

We have to give ourselves a permission to fail. We have to give ourselves permission to make mistakes. It’s called learning. We had this. I get this. This is a parent-child issue. Kids don’t wanna fail in front of their parents. I didn’t wanna fail in front of my parents. I get it. We don’t wanna fail. We don’t wanna look like we messed up. 

I can give you a thousand examples of how this played out in my life. Guys, I was always into public speaking. Some of you guys could probably say, “Well, that makes a lot of sense.” But, yeah. I mean, even at the youngest age—I think I started doing public speaking probably was I in Tokyo when I was doing some stuff? Yeah. Probably, yeah. Probably, you know, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Right. 

Yeah, so I’ve been into public speaking and I’ve done public speaking in terms at the church. I’ve done public speaking for consulting. I’ve done public speaking on behalf as an ambassador, different organizations in the past. But I’ll tell you this, the few moments when I had to speak and do public speaking and my father was present—I’ll tell you, it was always really interesting to look out in the crowd and see him. And the reason is, is because he would never watch me. 

Oh, he would watch me get on stage and he would watch me prepare, and he would, you know, prep and then get ready to go, and then I never knew when, actually, I never knew when, all I know is that there was always a moment in the beginning of my talk, my speech, the thing that I was doing that I would look out in the crowd and I’d see my father, and every time I glanced down around where my father was, his eyes would always be closed. His eyes would always be closed. 

And I’ll tell you, I never knew the reason why. I could probably conjure up in some assumptions as to why. Maybe it’s because he just wanted to hear and listen, and totally suck in what his son is talking about. Maybe he closed his eyes because he doesn’t need to see me speak because he knows what I look like, he knows my mannerisms, he knows my behaviours, he knows all this, and so he just wants to focus on what I’m saying. 

I always thought, to be quite frank with you guys, I always thought he closed his eyes because he didn’t want me to feel embarrassed or feel like there was any pressure from him. That’s why I think he never watched me do these things. I think he knew that if I had made a mistake or I had said something and it didn’t come out right, or I forgotten what I needed to say, or messed up during that talk, that speech, whatever, that he knew that I would take it, maybe, more personal, more hurtful if I caught his glance in the height of that mistake. 

Maybe I’m just overthinking it. Maybe my dad closed his eyes because the brother was fucking asleep. What it really was is a fear. In terms of this whole idea of giving yourself permission to make mistakes–that’s what I want to talk with you guys about. But what it really is for me is the fear of shame, of feeling shame for making mistakes and having people find out aboutit, I think that’s the bigger issue. 

I came into this equation, I came into this talk today guys around the idea of giving yourself permission to make mistakes. You’re giving yourself permission to fail. But what I came to as I was going through my notes, when I came to the conclusion what it really was, it was not an issue of giving myself permission to fail, it was, you know, utilize the shame or the fear of shame to produce will, to produce willpower. 

You know, that for me–and this is only me, I don’t know how it’s gonna work out for you guys. But for me, that has been such a huge motivator. And it’s generally never stemmed from mistakes that I’ve made. It’s come from the shame of people…saying or I’ve–me over hearing or hearing something that makes me feel like I’m that–they don’t believe that what I’m doing is possible, right? That makes me feelshame.  

Like, I haven’t been able to convince you, I haven’t been able to show you, I haven’t been able to prove to you. And for me that, like, how I have translated that interestingly is into some semblance of shame and that shame produces this willpower, this, “I’ll show you, motherfucker.” At least, that’s how I’ve internalized this shame. 

But what are we shamed of? What is this fear of shame really all about? What is it? Is it that we are ashamed? And I was writing these notes down. Is it–is that we’re ashamed because we went for it? Because we gave it our all? Is that what we’re ashamed of? We’re ashamed of that we’re going for it a hundred and ten percent? That we’re giving it our all? That when we go for it and we mess up…you’ll…  have an opinionabout me? 

Did you guys follow that logic? None of that makes any sense. What are you afraid of? What are you ashamed of? Where might you need to give yourself permission to fail? Because what happens if you fail, people will think something of you, we’ve talked about this.  If people think something of you, wonderful. In a hundred years they’ll be gone and so you. No one will remember you and they certainly won’t remember what just happened.  

So what are we really fearful of in terms of giving ourselves permission to fail or the fear of the shame of failure? Because we went for it, because we gave it our all? But here’s the problem guys, when we go for it and we mess upwe also get something done. We progress. 

You see, when my son fell off that bike in one of the most spectacular ways, it looked like it hurt, bro. You know, you ever see someone get hit like in a football game or something like that and you’re like, “Bro, I felt that shit. Like, that fucking hurt.”  Like, when I saw my son flip over this bike and smash his left side into the handlebar, I was like, “Bruh, that’s good. That’s gonna leave a mark.”

And in that pain, and in that suffering, and in that shame then I hopefully–to the best of my ability showed my son that I’m always gonna be here as best as I can. He never has to worry about me giving him shame. It’ll never come from me. It’ll be self-induced, I promise. 

But I was there, I get to give him a hug, and he made progress. He’s one step closer and that’s what I told him, I said, “You’re one step closer, bro. It was good. I mean, you are up there for at least two seconds, bro.” You know, we can keep ourselves…from a life of progress. We can keep ourselves from a life of progress merely because of the fear of the shame or not being able to give ourselves a permission to try to fail. 

When you make a mistake my friends, you have just opened up a new territory to explore and conquer. I wrote it in my notes and that my friendsis one of my favourite things about learning is that when you make a mistake you have now entered into a brand new game, a brand new world, a brand new territory that you thought wasn’t their–number one. But number, two you clearly haven’t mastered because you fucked up. You messed up. 

You now have to conquer this new land. It’s like the fog of war in StarCraft, or Warcraft, or any big MMO, you know, as your little toon is walking around the grass or walking around the map there’s this fog war, you don’t know what’s out there. You don’t know. But there could be treasure on the other side of the fog of war. There could be reward. There could be new resources, “Vespene gas, motherfucker.”  We gotta get that vespene gas. There could be a new challenge—oh, and also there could be death…on the other side of the fog of war…but that’s what the game of life is all about. 

The game of life is walking into the fog of war and what you’re hoping for is reward, new resources, new challenges,“The vespene gas.” But you could be stepping into your death. That’s what I love and I say proverbial death, you know, not real death but proverbial death, right? When you miss, make a mistake.  You’ve just opened up a new territory to conquer, that’s good. I enjoyed this. 

I mean, others don’t especially, if you, you know, share your learnings with them sometimes people don’t like it when you’re learning new stuff. It’s sometimes interesting–I don’t know I’m having this thought but sometimes interesting how successful people forget the grind and how hard they had to work to get where they are and when you share with successful people that you’re learning something newthey laugh, or they scoff, or they’re like, “Oh, that’s interesting. All right. And from what?” 

It’s like, “Bruh, didn’t you remember you had to learn something new? Didn’t you remember when you were terrible? Didn’t you remember that successful people today do it poorly…before they do it well?” Let me say that again, that’s actually worth repeating, successful people do it poorly before they do it well.  Successful people do it poorly before they do it well. You have to go through the learning to take the 1% every day, the 1 step every day. 

Give yourself permission to make mistakes. If you’re going to move forward, fuck the shame. It produces will. I’ll show you. I have this new territory to conquer, I didn’t know this even existed. I can’t believe I fell into this, I made a mistake and I’ve fallen into a new world. I did not know, what I didn’t know, and I didn’t know that this great new land needs to be conquered by me now. 

Any investment in experience avails higher levels of productivity and higher levels of efficiency, do, do, do. Go, go, go. Don’t quit trying, don’t stop learning. This is what I told and always try to remind my kids about all the time and every time they make a mistake I remind them, I said, “Keep going. Try again. Keep going. I’m here. We got this.” 

And so for you guysout there listening today, I hope, that you will give yourself permission to go forward. Permission to make mistakes, permission to fail. Fuck the shame, it produces will. So what if someone thinks something about you because you went for it? You went for it with all you had, you gave it your all, and people saw you failed. Oh well, tomorrow’s a new day. 

Three things to rememberwhen you’re giving yourself permission to fail and move forward. 1, leverage your support. Those who do, they care about you, they want to help you. 2, just take one step at a time. Keep going. And 3, never forget that the 1% today is the goal and the mistakes that you make are nevermore important than your goal. 

Your goal is always going to be greater than your mistakes. So leverage your support, keep going step by step, and remember the goal whatever that is. Guys, giveyourselves permission to fail. Face what is shaming you or you thought would shame you. In my son’s example, my son thought poorly he was mistaken, he thought that he would look at me and I would shame him for making a mistake, “No. Bruh, I’m on your team.” 

Don’t worry about what people think, keep moving forward, guys. You’ve got this. This is Peter, the Bitcoin Lambo. If you liked this episode guys, subscribe, smash the like button and if you double think about it send this to somebody. Send it to somebody that might need it. Oh, give me a comment below, sucker.