My friend, Bill, who runs the most amazing bike cafe in the world, Velo Verde in Nottinghamshire, took on a huge and impressive challenge last year to ride point to point around the Pyrenees in a completely unsupported event (carrying all your own gear) for his 60th birthday.
He never made it and had to retire halfway through but the way he talks about it and his experience of that and the fact that he wants to go and have another go again seemed to me to have made it a great success.
We never actually fail completely very often.
Understanding that something might not work (but it's exciting anyway) might be one of the most extraordinary places to start a project because the ‘this probably won't work’ means this probably won't work 100%.
Taking on a project like that, that is exciting and inspiring and that stretches you to and beyond your limits means that if it fails at 90%, you're miles ahead of where you were before.
We assume that something not working means that we will fail and be much worse off than we were before we started.
I think that's a paradigm we should shift.
I think starting something without the chance of 100% success is totally viable and totally valuable.
In fact, I think the opposite.
I think starting something with a guaranteed 100% of success is setting the bar too low.
Blog Post Number - 3411