"Wow That's A Shit Attitude"
Growing up in the 90s and early 2000s everyone thought skateboarding and other extreme sports were the coolest…
which is true.
While I made my attempts at skateboarding and the like, I was missing a crucial skill that makes a good skateboarder.
The ability to try with confidence regardless of the fear of failing.
Skaters face their fears knowing that there is the possibility that they will fail.
They are ready if that happens and attack with confidence.
Skaters are Professionals at failing (and bailing).
Skaters spend the majority of their time falling and bailing (failing) until they finally land the trick and roll away clean.
Did you know that actor Owen Wilson skates? Neither did I, but I came across this clip from Yeah Right! a while back and sure enough here he is dropping some wisdom on this exact Idea.
(Disclaimer: Owen Wilson is a professional actor and did not do his own stunts ✨ )
Wow!
ok jokes aside I think its really cool to see how Owen Wilson embodies this idea:
He encourages his friends to go for a trick that is more difficult than the one they have tried before or even something they are familiar with but in a different context.
Owen Challenges his friend’s who express their fears about getting hurt and says “Well that’s a shit attitude, you gotta decide which god your gonna worship. You can either complain or you can skate.”
Owen goes on to say how being afraid of getting hurt (failing) and being in denial about being afraid is the worst mindset that we can have. It will keep us from doing the creative work we want to accomplish.
In other words, this fear of failing is the slippery slope to a negative and debilitating mindset.
So what do we do?
We get good at failing
A good Skateboarder knows how to see a situation, and bail or fall without getting seriously injured. Skaters spend more time bailing than they actually spend landing anything. They practice and become professionals at failure.
The determination and methodical approach a skateboarder takes to solving the creative problem of figuring out the line of tricks is the exact type of mentality we need to have when approaching our work as creative professionals.
We need to have the confidence to give it our all and send it at the challenges in front of us believing each time we are gonna land and ride away clean.
To accomplish something few people in the world can claim to have done we need to be bold enough to fail at it more times than anyone else.
The Jedi Master Yoda once said, “Do or do not there is no try”.
The wisdom here I think is that regardless of whether you accomplish what you set out to accomplish, you showed up and did the thing you set out to do… which is try.
🤔 What’s next?
Practice failing, giving it your all even when you are afraid.
For me, this looks like doing things I am afraid to do even if I do them poorly just to get over the fear of it and then looking to slowly improve with each attempt.
Writing in this capacity is a first hand example of that for me.
