exercises

I suck, I’m great

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

New exercise in my Quick Ideas for Creative Action series, called: I SUCK, I’M GREAT.

This is a great one for flipping your own expectations around about what you’re supposed to be good at, and what you’re supposed to hide.

Simple idea: make a list of things you suck at, switch each one to its opposite, then say out loud, I AM GREAT AT [opposite thing].

Because think about it — if I suck at being on time, I must be great at being late.

I walk you through it here, and I’d like to draw your attention to my fabulous skills in rambling and repeating myself and abrupt video editing:

Announce a mistake in advance

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

I made a video as part of a new series I’m doing, Quick Tricks for Creative Living (note: I can’t decide if the name for this series sucks, so I might change it in the future*) (I’m already demonstrating the power of this exercise by announcing a potential mistake in advance!) 

These are short, easy exercises you can try as you’re going about your day, to help you diffuse obstacles, reframe expectations and engage creatively and proactively with the challenges life is throwing at you.

Today’s trick: ANNOUNCE A MISTAKE IN ADVANCE

I don’t know about you, but I hate making mistakes. I’m a recovering perfectionist and an oldest child so I get stuck in “if I’m not doing everything right I’m LETTING THE TEAM DOWN” narratives.

That’s why I was so delighted when someone in one of my workshops had this idea (as a way to deal with stress at work), to pre-emptively neutralize criticism by announcing what you might do wrong before you do it.

So say you’re stacking a bunch of onions in a display case. You would announce to everyone around you, “I am about to arrange these onions precariously so it’s impossible to take one out without sending them all rolling.”

When this idea first came up, we all cackled at the idea, and then had a blast thinking up examples.

I am about to awkwardly introduce myself to that woman over there.

Hold on, I need to try and parallel park and end up 3 feet away from the curb.

I am heading out to a meeting, and will take the most roundabout, least straightforward way and hopefully get stuck in traffic on the way.

The more examples we came up with, the more I started to think it might actually be a brilliant idea. So I’ve been trying it out since then, and without fail, it lightens the energy, relaxes the (self-imposed) pressure and more often than not, helps me to NOT make the mistake!

I’ll walk you through it here — give it a shot and let me know how it goes!

 

*UPDATE: I have indeed changed the name, it’s now Quick Ideas for Creative Action!

What would my alter ego do?

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

One of the things I love about acting is being able to step into and out of an alter ego.

I learned a long time ago that one way for me to be confident was to “play” someone confident onstage.

It took me a lot longer to figure out that I could use the same principle in my life offstage: that if I went into a situation with the right outfit / mantra / alter ego / attitude, I could fake my way into confidence.

I only learned this once life (in my case, having a baby) forced me to build a life outside the theater – and learning it is what propelled me to channel my theatre training into coaching. 

I tested this idea in my own life over the last month, as I performed my manifesto in the persona of a character who is basically me in a spectacular jumpsuit.

The outfit took on a life of its own, and to live up to the image it projected, I became another version of myself: someone who is sharper, bolder, more confident in her weirdness.

You can try this too, and you don’t have to go onstage to do it.

You can create an alter ego that is another version of yourself: stronger, clearer, more spaced out, softer, meaner, louder, grungier. It’s not about being better. It’s about what you learn about yourself when you step into another character. (Those of you who have children, or who remember your own childhoods, have probably seen this with your own eyes: when we’re little, we figure out who we are by pretending to be something else).

You can use this alter ego to test out what you want, what you think, what you fear, what you hate, what you think you’re capable of. You might be surprised by what you find out. (For example, I was very surprised to find out in the course of making my show that I love new age woo woo stuff once you take out the element of control, domination, betterment and perfection).

To create your own alter ego, here’s a good way to start:

  1. NAME
  2. OUTFIT
  3. MANTRA

I’ll walk you through it:

1. PICK A NAME

  • Look around until a random object catches your eye (here are some examples from where I’m sitting right now: stool, skeleton, iron, rainboots).
  • Pick a nickname you or someone you knew had in childhood (examples from people I know: Face, Boo, Kaa, Jaja).
  • Put the two names together (examples: Stool Face, Skeleton Boo, Kaa Iron, Jaja Rainboots). Voila! You’ve got an alter ego.

2. DRAW A TWO MINUTE SELF PORTRAIT OF YOUR ALTER EGO  

  • Set the timer for two minutes
  • Write the name on a piece of paper
  • Draw a picture of that character
  • Color it in with crayons or markers or a weird red pen

3. FREEWRITE FOR TWO MINUTES

  • Set the timer for two minutes again
  • Write what you see in the picture you drew
  • You could also answer these questions: Who is this person? What are their superpowers? What is their kryptonite? Where do they come from? What are they wearing? Who are they protecting? Who are they fighting? What car do they drive?
  • Look back over what you wrote, and circle 5-6 words that stand out to you.
  • Write those words in a list, then mess around with them until they become something like a mantra. It doesn’t have to make sense, but it needs to speak to you.

When I did this at our workshop last week, here’s what I came up with:

DURA-FLAME WAITHY

IMG_0621

Looking into the distance, wearing a cape of flame

So now what? What do you do with this alter ego?

I’ll tell you what: you practice stepping into those shoes. You channel it at boring parties or endless meetings or conversations at the grocery store. When you need to speak up, you think, what would my alter ego say? When you aren’t sure what to do, you ask, what would my alter ego do? And when you’re at a thrift store, you ask, what would my alter ego wear? And if you’re brave, you buy that piece of clothing and you wear it out in public and see what happens.

That’s enough to get you started! Let me know what you find out.

(And if you want to go deeper with this, come to the next Creative Living workshop or sign up for my 6-week coaxing program)

TRY THIS: HAIKU YOUR LIFE

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

Here’s an exercise I’ve been using a lot lately.

It evolved out of my daily creative check-in — a 2-minute self portrait, then a 2-minutes free-write. I felt like I needed something to cap it off, so I  started circling 5-7 words and making them into a kind of poem or mantra. A haiku for the day, if you will (though it’s technically not a haiku).

Lately I’ve been trying a different kind of haiku hybrid: the 7 words or less challenge.

The idea is simple. You pick your topic — maybe an event in your past, or what you want to do today, or looking back on the week — and then express it in seven words.

For someone like me, who processes visually & verbally – often with a rush of words that overwhelm like a waterfall – there is something satisfying about the limitation of saying it in seven words.  They have to pack a punch, like Hemingway.

And what surprises me is that it often isn’t hard to do. In fact, I’d go as far as to say I could get the essence of any event in my life across to you in 7 words. Maybe better than if we sat down for a long talk over coffee.

Does that sound like a challenge? Join me, let’s give it a shot!

Here, I will talk you through it.

Approach #1: Freewrite and select words

Set the timer for two minutes, and write freely about whatever is on your mind. If you want, pick a starting point or question, like “the week in review,” or “how am I feeling today,” or “what I need to do.”

Now write anything you want for two minutes. Don’t think about it, and don’t try and answer the question. Write whatever words float into your brain, even if it’s just one word over and over. It doesn’t have to make sense. Just move your pen across the paper.

When you’re done, let your eyes wander back over what you wrote, and circle the first seven words that jump out at you. (You can do more or less words, but I find 7 is a good rule of thumb).

Now write those words down, and play around with them.

Here’s an example of how this went for me a couple weeks ago. I wrote about how I was feeling in the morning, and then circled 7 words that stood out:

wild, riot, flower pot, rich, soil, growth

I turned those words into this little poem:

wild riot in a flower pot

IMG_0063

Approach #2: Haiku Hybrid in 7 words or less

Decide on a topic. Here are some ideas:

– a life event I obsess about
– why I’m like my mom
– my first boyfriend
– a fight with my best friend
– my neighbor growing up
– a time I failed
– my year in review
– what I want in 2016
– what I learned from my family
– my superpowers
– my parenting style
– the opposite of what I want to do
– a book that made me cry
– the first movie that scared me
– favorite piece of clothing
– music I will not listen to
– ideal vacation / job / life / day…
– my birth story
– what needs to change
– something traumatic
– something transcendent
– something that changed me
– who I was five years ago
– what I wish I knew when I was 20
– who I will be in ten years

Or you can keep it open and talk about your week or what you’re feeling.

Now say it in 7 words or less. You can use the idea of “words” loosely – I interpret it more as key phrases or  snapshots of the experience you’re describing (as opposed to 7 words in a logical sentence).

So for instance, here is how I would describe my week in seven words or less:

Insomnia
Night weaning
6:30 am
Running hug
Calendar Tetris

That might not make sense to you, but it does to me! Here’s another example:

Theme: Dark time in my life 5 years ago:*

year of yes
goddess group
psychic
pregnant
prediction
miscarriage
year of no

Here’s another one off the top of my head:

Why I don’t watch horror movies:

Blood
Shock
Visual cortex
Stupid
Can’t sleep
Pass out

Isn’t it interesting how this tells you a different kind of story than if I explained in detail why I don’t watch horror movies? It lets your mind fill in the gaps – it’s more of a game between us, which is more interesting for both of us than me telling you what happened.

BONUS: if you do this in your journal, you can look back over your hybrid haikus and see if any themes emerge.

And if you want, post your haiku in the comments or on the facebook page!

*if any of you have seen my solo show / manifesto, you saw me try a version of this in front of an audience! Which you will be able to see again in January when I do the full show here in Portland. Tickets are on sale now!

STUPID SOLUTIONS TO A BIG PROBLEM: GUN VIOLENCE

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

One exercise I do in my failure workshops that’s always a surprise hit is ‘Stupid Solutions to Big Problems’. We form teams and brainstorm stupid solutions to huge, urgent, seemingly intractable problems. It’s strangely cathartic, and often the weirdest, wildest ideas are actually kind of great.

I bring this up because today, once again, I am confronted by a horrifying, endlessly repeating problem: gun violence.

And I cannot bear to see the same old helpless questions and dialogues and discussions and nothing happen in response.

So I thought: why don’t I brainstorm some stupid solutions? At least it will distract me from the sheer awfulness for a while. And so I present to you:

STUPID SOLUTIONS TO A BIG PROBLEM: the gun violence edition

  1. Mandatory support groups for all gun owners to talk about their feelings. Like you can’t buy a gun unless you attend two meetings involving group hugs, crying it out and learning how to speak your anger.
  1. Someone hire clowns to trail the NRA and freak them out until they do something about this. Clowns with guns? Is that too much? Can’t be worse than what we already have.
  1. Stop talking to any friends with guns until they shut down the fucking NRA.
  1. This might be a good idea actually – can we boycott the NRA? Obviously the NRA doesn’t give a shit if I boycott them, but could responsible gun owners boycott the NRA? Would you do that, guys? Would you boycott hunting – refuse to buy any hunting gear, licenses, guns and whatever else you buy when you hunt until the NRA backs down and legislation is passed?
  1. Fine anyone who sells a gun to a mass shooter a million dollars. Like the OLCC does for bartenders who serve alcohol to someone who goes on to get in a drunk driving accident.

Here’s what the OLCC says:

Q: What will happen to me if I allow a visibly intoxicated person to continue to drink alcohol?

A: You could be fined and your license or service permit suspended. Repeated violations could lead to the cancellation of your license or service permit. In addition, you could be held liable in a third party liability law suit if the visibly intoxicated person injures another person or damages someone else’s property.

OK, call me stupid, but couldn’t we do the exact same thing if someone sells a gun to a shooter? Just swap out ‘visibly intoxicated’ with ‘visibly planning to shoot someone’.

  1. Give mass shooters an infantilizing nickname and never use their actual picture, instead use a cartoon image that makes them look ridiculous, like this:

Lots of Kids Dead in Mass Shooting by Loony Lardface

IMG_20151001_210112

Fantastic. Well, I feel a little less consumed by rage and horror. If you have some stupid ideas to share, I would love to hear them!

What do I do? (A primer with fart sounds)

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

When I tell people I’m a Creative Guide, the next question I usually get is, what is that?

Or, so what do you do exactly?

They’re good questions. What DO I do, exactly?

I tell people that I “use creative tools” and “help people get in touch with their imagination” but this doesn’t sound very tangible. And in fact, the work we do often IS tangible. As in, perceptible by touch, palpable, real, and substantial.

I thought the best way to get this across would be to take a page from my own toolbox (my toolbox is FILLED with pages) and take these three steps:

  • name things
  • write the names on cards
  • arrange the cards on big paper

So that’s what I did! Here it is:

IMG_20150616_114857

My approach comes down to 6 principles:

  1. Ask questions
  2. Experiment
  3. Paradox: mess with binary oppositions
  4. Radical empathy + honesty
  5. Slow down, look & listen
  6. Do it badly

And I guess there’s a 7th wild card principle which doesn’t get a card because it pervades everything: go deeper by not taking things too seriously.

Or: take everything to heart while laughing your ass off.

An example of the wild card principle in action: one of my go-to exercises when I’m first working with people is to look deep into each other’s eyes while making fart sounds.

It sounds so stupid! And it is! We’re open and receptive, and we’re giggling like kids. An excellent place to start.

My point is, these principles might sound airy, but they are all about action that you can take, starting now, that shift your perspective and shift your world.

I’m going to talk about each of my guiding principles (god, hopefully I come up with a better word than principles… guiding lights?) in the weeks to come, and if you’re worried that it will be boring, I vow to include videos and dumb things to make you laugh.

In fact, I’ll start now! Let’s do the fart exercise together! I know we’re not actually in the same room right now, but let’s pretend we are and make fart sounds for 30 seconds. I bet you can’t do it without laughing, but if you do, you win a SERIOUS FART SOUNDER award (email me your address and I’ll mail it to you, for real.)

SFS Award

Ready? Let’s go. I’m going to say my name and title so I sound super important, and then I’ll pause to give you time to say yours, and then we’ll make fart sounds. YES!

Try this: Invent your own superhero

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

This past Sunday, we had a lovely workshop on the theme of alternate worlds / alternate lives. There were only two of us (it’s hard to compete with a warm sunny day in Portland), but we inhabited our alter-egos (Lightbulb Helmet and Craesie Fleur) with aplomb.

If you’d like to do some world shaking on your own time, I invite you to try one of the exercises we did in the workshop: invent your own superhero.

Step 1: Get some paper and a pen, sit down and close your eyes. Let the image of a superhero float into your mind.

Step 2: Jot down answers to these questions (don’t think about them — write the first things that come to mind):

  • What is their superpower?
  • Where did they come from — what is their origin story?
  • What is their fatal flaw or weakness?
  • What kind of outfit do they wear?
  • What vehicle do they drive?
  • Who are their helpers?
  • Who are their enemies — who are they fighting?
  • What are they fighting for?
  • Who are they protecting?

Step 3: Draw a picture of your superhero based on what you wrote down.

Step 4: What is your superhero’s name? Do they have a catchphrase?

Splendid! Now if you want to, share your superhero with us on facebook! I would love to meet them.

Here’s mine:

JET DIAMOND

IMG_20150505_144928

Jet Diamond was born in a coal mine. Her mother was 9 months pregnant and working in the mine when it collapsed. They thought everyone was dead, but when the rubble cleared, Old Man Winters walked out with a canary on one arm and a newborn baby in the other. He adopted the baby girl and named her Jet Diamond. Right away he noticed that she had laser sharp eyesight, and as she grew, her ability to see through dust and hypocrisy grew stronger.

She wears all black glittering with diamonds, and is accompanied always by her canary, Blink.

She is extremely sensitive to coaldust and can only spend a little time in dusty, murky environments before the air gets to be too much for her lungs.

She rides in on her jet black motorcycle, sees through the shams and shoddy deals constructed by rich men, and helps the workers see what they can’t see and stand up for their rights.

Then she rides out of town so fast a thunderstorm can’t keep up with her.

Bonus step: If this superhero were to show up at your door for an emergency meeting, what would they need to tell you? Would they need your help? Would they have some advice for you? Would they alert you to danger?

I imagine Jet Diamond riding up after she’s had a long, tough battle. She’s worn out, and afraid she isn’t up for the challenge anymore. I make her a cup of tea and have her tell me the whole story. Then I tell her she needs to take a break and go easy, and she insists there isn’t time for that and she needs to save the world, but then she falls asleep on the couch and I take off her boots and lay a nice cozy blanket over her.

Aside from the fact that this scene that plays out in probably every movie ever made about a superhero (and I am casting myself in the faithful butler role), what does this tell me about my own life? Maybe I’m taking myself a little too seriously. Maybe the best thing to do is take a nap. Maybe I get a little carried away with the desire to save people and be the hero. It’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to do things just because you feel like doing them. It’s okay to let other take care of me sometimes. Or even better, to take care of myself.

But who knows, maybe next week I’ll see a whole different message.

Extra bonus round: using the exact same prompts in step 2, invent a supervillain.

Hey there! Is this right up your alley? If you’re in Portland, you can come to one of my free Sunday morning workshops and experience it firsthand! Or if you want to go deep, you can join a Creative Workout Group, or work with me one-on-one. 

Living in an alternate world

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

I am a big fan of speculative fiction — and I could easily write a long, long post about the rabbit hole of internet fascinations that appear when you google that term — but long story short, it’s because books and films and television set in another world or time give us a chance to step out of our actual lives and engage our imaginations. When we do that, we open up to possibilities in our present, actual world that we could not see before.

“God damn you all to hell!”

Or, as TV Tropes eloquently puts it:

One of the greatest strengths of Sci-Fi and Fantasy is that they can convey real-life situations in a new context by showing everyday problems, humanity’s greatest challenges, and even social commentary that’s ostensibly free of the prejudices and preconceptions that weigh them down in Real Life, giving us a more detached view of a given problem… as if we were aliens visiting Earth, or rather Earthlings visiting World of Weirdness.

In a way, it’s similar to why I got into acting when I was a kid. I was shy, but when I stepped onstage I could step into another persona (for instance: this one), and access parts of myself that had previously been unknown. That’s something any actor does: they put on a costume and do their hair and step into a heightened space, and become someone else for a while. I think this is something we could all benefit from doing.

In fact, we all do it a little bit: we get a radical haircut to jumpstart a big change in life, we apply darker, bolder makeup for going out at night, or we step into one persona for work, and then another one when we get home and change out of our work clothes.

I thought it would be fun to take this a step further, to stretch our brains and bodies and see what might be hanging around in our unconscious. So on Sunday I’m leading a workshop exploring alternate worlds and alternate lives. We’ll draw pictures of our alter egos, imagine our superhero and supervillain selves (and more importantly, their outfits), recreate/revise a seminal moment from our past, create a new world, and apply sci fi tropes like “gone horribly right” or “the [adjectival] man” to our personal lives.

the_invisible_man_by_stevedore

I am very curious to find out what happens. It raises so many questions and I can’t wait to see how we answer them on our feet: if you could invent a new world, what would it look like? What keeps us from inventing that world now? What can you learn by embodying your opposite self? What can you learn by embodying your worst or best traits, by taking them to their furthest extreme? If you changed one thing in your past, what else might change?

Come by and find out with me! Details are here.

How to Fail, part 2

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

We had our workshop last Sunday and it was a great success. Meaning, we failed fantastically. Here are some of the things we did – and good news, you can try these at home.

WORST FEET FORWARD

We picked our least favorite body part, and instead of hiding it, we drew attention to it. (Interestingly, for most people the body part of choice was their belly. I know for me, it felt cathartic to stick my belly out instead of sucking it in, to take pride in its softness). Try this when you’re walking around your house by yourself – emphasize the body part you usually hide, and see how it feels to show it off.

I APOLOGIZE

We apologized to the group for everything we had done wrong this week, big or small.

I think this exercise is especially powerful for the ladies. If you’re a strong, smart woman, I bet you spend a lot of energy stopping yourself from apologizing. It’s good to stem the tide of reflexive apology, but it’s also nice to give yourself room to go the other way. Clearly we have a great need to apologize, so why not get it out of the way? Apologize for everything, even if it’s not your fault! Apologize profusely, apologize way too much, apologize from the bottom of your heart.

To do this on your own, try this: get some paper and write down everything you did wrong this week. Made the coffee too weak? Forgot to call your Mom back? Snapped at your partner? Felt like the vibe at work was weird and maybe it was because of something you did? Write it all down. You can use this format if it helps:

I apologize for _____.

I [wasn’t thinking / didn’t prepare / got angry…] and I [messed up / bungled the presentation / hurt your feelings…].

I apologize about that.  

When you’ve filled up a page, read them out loud. Add in “I am so, so, so, so sorry” or “please forgive me” when/if appropriate.   Then rip it out and throw it away. You’re done! Apology accepted.

BAD POETRY

We wrote bad poetry, which included odes to phlegm, folding chairs, red leather chaps and the winning entry:

IMG_20150406_141935

If you want to write bad poetry, it’s easy: pick a thing (could be something abstract like love, or mundane like a granola bar). Write ODE TO [THING] at the top of a sheet of paper. Now write the worst poem you can about that thing.

Some techniques to try: bad rhymes, going on way too long or not long enough, stating the obvious, reveling in self-indulgence, making bad jokes, using “I” as much as possible, dragging a metaphor into the ground… there are SO MANY WAYS! Start and find out what your personal worst is.

BIG PROBLEMS / STUPID SOLUTIONS

We brainstormed stupid solutions to big problems, like racism, climate change and feeding hungry kids.

IMG_20150406_142052 (1)

You can try this too, with either a big global problem or a problem in your life. Pick the problem, set the timer for 5 minutes, and come up with as many dumb solutions as you can.

Here’s an example from my life: a problem I’m experiencing lately is how to get my 19-month-old son to sleep at night. Here are some stupid solutions:

  • I could write a 5-page essay on the merits of sleep and read it aloud to my son
  • I could perform an interpretive dance every night called “Bed Time”
  • I could walk outside in the middle of the night and cry to the heavens, “WHY?!!!!”
  • When he wakes up in the middle of the night, I could just cry with him
  • I could give him a shot of whiskey [remember, these are STUPID solutions, not things I would actually do!]
  • I could play him these ‘power of positive thinking’ tapes someone gave me
  • I could find a boring financial podcast and play that on repeat
  • I could post a question about it on facebook [full disclosure, I know this is a stupid solution because I have done it]
  • I could make flyers that say HELP ME GET MY SON TO SLEEP and post them around town with my phone number

You get the idea.

FALLING

We practiced falling, and then practiced doing a big confident walk across the room with a spectacular fall in the middle.

If you want to fall right, here’s how: count to ten, and do a slow motion fall so you’re on the ground by the time you get to ten. Then count back from ten to one, and get back up on your feet in slow motion.

Do it again, but with a five-count. Now do it to a count of 3. Look at that! You’re falling!

BAD ELEVATOR SPEECH

We ended the workshop with super awkward, meandering, oddly confrontational elevator speeches.

Want to try? Imagine someone you deeply want to impress. Someone you would love to meet and get a chance to talk to – maybe it’s a leader in your field, or the boss of your boss, or the hot guy you keep seeing around town.

Now imagine that you walk into an elevator in a building, and GET OUT OF TOWN. They are standing right there. Now is your chance!

Imagine what you would like to say to them in the two minutes you have in the elevator – the words you would use, the way your body would move, how they’d look at you.

Now stand in front of a mirror, and do the opposite of that.

Say exactly what you would NOT like to say, using words that you would not like to use, doing things with your body that are embarrassing or awkward or weird, and imagine their face looking back at you in horror.

Bonus round: do your best confident walk, and say the best version of your elevator speech, but halfway through launch your spectacular fall.

There! Doesn’t it feel good to get all that out of your system?

Hey! Want to work some of these ideas out in person? I’m available to do one-on-one sessions, or you can hire me to lead a workshop for your organization!

practice failing

/ Faith Helma / Leave a comment

Everyone knows that the way to innovate, grow and become smarter is to fail.

Fail more, fail better, fail smarter, fail wisely – experts agree that if you want to succeed, you need to be willing to fail.

Which is great. I get that, intellectually.

But how do you actually DO it?

Because no matter how strongly you believe in it’s importance, or how many strong words you put next to it, the fact remains that actually failing is scary as hell. We are socially wired to avoid failure at all costs for fear of being banished from the tribe and left out in the wilderness to die (though if you find yourself in that scenario, reading Clan of the Cave Bear and asking yourself, what would Ayla do? will go a long ways towards assuring your survival).

From author Jean Auel’s website:

In Ayla’s story readers find what very well may be the story of human survival, for it is by wit, instinct, adaptation, and gathering knowledge that Ayla thrives among a people who are not like her, in a society that sees her as strange, in a world where elements, animals, and the enmity of others make surviving each day a challenge.

Anyway, point is, many of us avoid failure in high stakes situations, because when the stakes are high, you are in survival mode, and survival mode tells you it is imperative that you not fail, that you fit in, that you win. But as Ayla would tell you, this is exactly the situation when having a good relationship with your fear of failure can help you. Because here is the thing:

Failure is a potential – even likely – outcome, no matter WHAT you do.

You can’t control when and where it will rear it’s head.

What you can control is your response to it.

So for instance, if you find yourself alone with a bear and your slingshot misfires, you are in much better shape if you have experienced a misfire many, many times before. If you have only operated your slingshot (I have no idea what a slingshot is exactly or if it can misfire, but let’s stay with this metaphor anyway) under optimal conditions, then you will have no idea what to do when it doesn’t work.

It is avoidance of failure that can get you killed, and it is being on good terms with failure that can help you survive.

So, back to our original question: HOW to get on good terms with failure?

I think the way to do this is to practice failing when the stakes are low. To embrace it when you aren’t, say, starting a new job or putting your savings account on the line or moving to a brand new city.

This Sunday, I am offering space to do just that, in my “I’m the Worst” workshop.

We are going to not merely be OKAY with failure, to TOLERATE our mistakes. We are going to try our hardest to make them, in the biggest, boldest, dumbest way possible.

 We are going to celebrate failure.

We are going to fail over and over again.

We are going to see what it means to win at losing.

We aren’t going to do this because we enjoy looking like jackasses (though we might enjoy it a little bit). We are going to do this so we can encounter that fear, dance with it, and get to know it. We are going to do this so we are well acquainted with falling.

Have you ever watched a baby learn how to walk? There is a LOT of falling involved. Like way more than seems reasonable. A lot of tipping over and lurching and bumping into things and tripping and getting stuck. And then, slowly, they learn how to balance their weight, how to right themselves, how to measure their footsteps, when to jump and when to shuffle, how to recover their balance gracefully – how not to fall.

That is what we are going to do! Spend two hours falling and failing. (And if you can’t be there in person, you can play along at home by failing at something low-stakes this week and seeing how it feels. You could tell a bad joke at a party. You could wear an ugly outfit around the house. You could wear it out dancing. You could dance like Elaine. The options are limitless.)

Then maybe next time we find ourselves in a high stakes situation, we can go into it thinking, hey, I’ve failed before, it’s not so bad.

I’m going to spend two minutes being awkward at this party and then I’m going to find someone I like talking to and we will hit it off.

I’m going to sweat too much, talk too fast and make a dumb joke in this job interview, and then I’m going to ask some good questions and show them I know what I’m talking about.

I’m going to spend 6 weeks (or months) having nightly panic attacks in my empty apartment and going to random coffee shops and the wrong bars before I find the right ones and figure out where my people are.

See what I mean? If you’re ready for it, it’s a little less scary. If you’ve experienced flop sweat and survived, you know it’s not as life threatening as you think it is.

So let’s do this!

Scene-from-the-film-version-of-Clan-of-the-Cave-Bear