It’s soooo easy to judge ourselves, especially in what we attempt toward our new and greater possibility.
It’s unknown, isn’t it, that possibility.
So how do we assess whether or not our latest attempt is moving us forward toward that greater future?
Unfortunately, we we often judge how we are doing bases on what we already know and what we already know is in our past!
That’s not necessarily a good marker of moving on when our moving on means making deep and profound change. Say I’ve always ridden a bicycle but my new future includes an emphasis on swimming. Now, what happens if I notice I’m swimming a lot these days? Our judgement pattern can jump in and alert us “Warning, you have deviated from your norm of bicycling. This is a mistake. Warning!!!”
Or consider the line of pencils in the photo. One is standing out of line in a different color. Whoa, our judgement system says. This is out of line. “Warning, mistake in progress”.
Really? No.
That red pencil is simply different. It is not automatically a mistake, rather a departure from the “what was” of our history. When we embark on a new direction, many of our attempts will be different and deliberately so.
The key here is to know ahead of time that our system may warn us heavily that these new attempts “are mistakes” and to be ready to substitute “are different” for that false feedback.
Being different is not necessarily a mistake. It’s too soon to tell.