Get back up and dust yourself off. How many clichés can you think of that run along these lines? There’s a lengthy list of them and they all really point to the same big idea. You’ve got to learn how to fall down and how to get back up again. It seems like it’s a pretty straight forward process and it really can be applied to all sorts of different arenas of life. The reality is a little more complex and it’s a reality we are all most certain to face.
Most recently I fell off the horse hard yet again and when I fall off the train completely derails. Just about every good habit I’ve set forth tumbles with the lot when a few of the others shake and sway with life’s punches. It’s definitely not a new development and I imagine it’s not unique in nature either. There has though become an element of reflection that’s followed just about every flop of the house of cards that has proven to compound over time. My ability to learn from the flops has increased directly in proportion to my ability to reflect on the why and how. Reflection on the flop is largely important to figure out why it happened and reflection can even be used to identify that you’ve derailed from time to time. You can easily catch yourself slipping if you pay attention. The development and use of such a skill can in turn save your hide from a total detour.
Reading the above may seem to you quite obvious and fairly straight forward but it isn’t so easy to apply the salve when you’ve not yet broken the seal atop the jar. To put a salve to good use we must crack the lid or prime the pump to access the contents. The same goes for these simplistic skills we are able to apply to ourselves and our life. We’ve got to fall down and get back up time and time again so that we can see precisely why and how we fall. We cannot look at a set of three numbers and identify a pattern, there’s not much to go on. Similarly, we cannot look back and anticipate deep learning when we’ve only fallen down twice or maybe even three times. It takes an entire set of data and a set of well governed eyes to be able to derive meaning from that data.
As humans we tend to give ourselves credit for being quite smarter than we are. Maybe you’re quite smart, I imagine you are, but even a black belt in karate must train rigorously for quite a long time to get his black belt. To understand the complexity behind falling down and getting back up again is to truly experience and see that there are many ways by which we must train our brain to be able to get to where we look to go. It’s easy to fall and its quite simple to get back up again sometimes but there’s a little more to that required.
Take care out there friends.
Jordan Hutchison 