SO WHAT IF IT DOESN'T WORK?

💡 Congratulations! You just figured out one way NOT to do it.

Yesterday, we talked about curiosity. About finally taking that idea you've been carrying around and giving it a chance.

But there's a little question that likes to show up right about the time we're ready to try something new.

What if it doesn't work?

Well...

SO WHAT IF IT DOESN'T WORK? 🤷‍♂️

Seriously.

What happens if you try something and it doesn't turn out the way you imagined?

Did the world end?

Did you suddenly lose everything you've learned over the years?

Or did you just discover something you didn't know yesterday?

Let's talk about that.

🧠 THE EXPERIENCE TRAP

Here's something I've been discovering about reinvention.

The longer you've been doing something, the more accustomed you become to knowing what you're doing.

You recognize problems before they happen. You know which tools to use. You've developed your own methods.

Experience is a wonderful thing.

Until you allow it to convince you that you should automatically be good at everything else you try.

Think about that for a minute.

You've spent YEARS learning your craft, and now you're frustrated because you haven't mastered something you've been experimenting with for three days?

Come on! 😂

You weren't born knowing how to do the things you're good at today.

You learned.

And somewhere along the way, you probably got quite a few things wrong.

Which brings me to something important.

💡 CONGRATULATIONS! YOU FIGURED OUT HOW NOT TO DO IT!

Imagine spending an entire afternoon working on an idea.

You're excited.

You've got a picture in your head of exactly how it's supposed to turn out.

You put everything together.

You step back to admire your creation.

And...

NOPE! 🤦‍♂️

That is NOT what you had in mind.

Now you've got two choices.

You can decide the entire experiment was a waste of time.

OR...

You can take a closer look at what happened.

Because somewhere inside that unsuccessful attempt is information.

Maybe you used the wrong tool.

Maybe your approach needs adjusting.

Maybe the original idea wasn't quite right.

Or maybe you're attempting something that requires a skill you haven't developed yet.

Whatever happened, you now know something you didn't know before.

That's progress.

It might not be the progress you expected, but it's progress nonetheless.

🔬 STOP DEMANDING RESULTS FROM EVERY EXPERIMENT

Here's where I think we sometimes get ourselves into trouble.

We turn every new idea into an obligation.

If we're going to learn something, we immediately start thinking about how we can make money doing it.

If we're going to create something, we start wondering whether anybody will like it.

If we're going to experiment, we expect the experiment to produce something useful.

Whatever happened to doing something simply because we're curious?

🎨 Creating something because we want to see what it looks like.

🎙️ Learning something because we want to understand how it works.

🛠️ Building something because we wonder whether we can.

Not everything we create has to become a business.

Not every experiment needs an audience.

And not every idea needs to become our next big thing.

Sometimes the reward is discovering what happens when we try.

🔄 ADJUST. EXPERIMENT. REPEAT.

Now, don't misunderstand me.

I'm not suggesting that we should spend the rest of our lives repeatedly attempting something that clearly isn't working.

There's a difference between persistence and refusing to learn.

If you keep doing the exact same thing and expecting a different outcome, you're not really experimenting anymore.

You're just repeating yourself.

A meaningful experiment teaches you something.

You observe what happened.

You identify what you might change.

And then you try a different approach.

Sometimes that means making a small adjustment.

Sometimes it means completely rethinking your original idea.

And occasionally, it means recognizing that the experiment has taught you everything you needed to know.

That's okay, too.

The objective isn't to prove that every idea you have is brilliant.

It's to remain willing to learn.

🚀 THE NEXT ATTEMPT

Here's what I find exciting about this entire reinvention conversation.

After years of experience, we have an incredible collection of knowledge, skills, mistakes and lessons to draw from.

And now we get to use all of that experience to explore things we've never done before.

We're not starting from zero.

We're starting with everything we've already learned.

And when something doesn't work?

Well, congratulations.

You've added another lesson to the collection. 😂

Figure out what happened.

Make an adjustment.

And if that idea still excites you...

TRY AGAIN.

Because the next attempt might teach you something completely unexpected.

And isn't that part of the fun?

☕ YOUR TURN

What's something you learned by getting it wrong the first time?

Maybe it was something you were building, a business decision, a creative experiment or an entirely new skill.

Share your experience.

You never know who might need to hear that their first unsuccessful attempt doesn't have to be their last.

👇 Let's hear your story!

🔴 RED ALPHA STUDIOS

Real People. Real Stories. Real Conversations.

KEEP READING. KEEP CREATING. KEEP REINVENTING.