My friend, Coyte Cooper (www.coytecooper.com; Make Your Mark), suggests we make sure our goals are “not reasonable by normal expectations”. We must stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zone. We must be willing to fail to exceed expectations. After all, if we do what others expect we can do, are we really doing anything so great?
I always relate to exercise physiology, so I might consider the concept of “momentary muscular failure” when examining the notion of going beyond one’s comfort zone. Here, failure is an intended consequence of our actions—one lifts a weight to the point of not being able to complete another repetition. Such “failure” is a profound stimulus for further growth.
As a professor, I value the educational benefit of “failing”. I do not prefer to have students get 100% on my exams. Instead, I would prefer exams of sufficient difficulty to reveal what the students don’t know rather than what they do know. I believe the greatest learning actually occurs after the exam is returned and students review the answers that are marked as incorrect.
The greatest growth in life occurs when we risk failure by going beyond our comfort zone. We are truly successful when we pursue that which is “not reasonable by normal expectations” and exceed normal expectations. We may, of course, fall short of our goal, but we will still manage to progress toward the goal.
Be your best today; be better tomorrow.
Carpe momento!