The Blog That Will Fail

Welcome to my blog and hello to my very first post. With little experience in writing or literature, my blog is most likely going to suck, or even look a little foolish (even with the dashingly handsome profile picture) in comparison to all the other writers on this platform who are actual magazine editors, book authors or professional bloggers.

Nonetheless, even with the fierce competition and knowing that this will fail because quite frankly, there is just no way that my writing or content is at the same playing field as all the other extremely talented writers here, I have still decided embark on the journey of starting this blog and be that as it may, I am actually still very thrilled to fail and look a bit foolish with this project!

Here’s why: Gymnastics

Looking back, everything that I ever considered my self being semi good at today, there was a point in my life where actually I sucked tremendously at it. Diving deep into my past, I can now recall every time while wanting to learn or try something new, I’ve always seem to have another force pull me back as well. Fortunately my inner force of trying and learning new things far exceeded the outer.

Take my recent gymnastics journey for example. At age 28, I decided that I wanted to learn gymnastics as I truly believed in mastering your body is the first step towards mastering all other elements in life. And with gymnastics being the foundation of all movements (strength, flexibility, mind-body connection) I had deiced that, even though it may seems like a long shot but why not give it a go? However, as anticipated, some force was holding me back and because this feeling was so recent, I can clearly recall the force was fear. Fear of failure, fear of looking like an complete idiot and perhaps the fear of doing a back flip and breaking my neck.

For some apparent reason, I somehow ignored the fear, grew some balls and decided to just call up a few local gymnastic programs and see maybe there are other adults just like me who are learning gymnastics. After a dozen phone calls and countless rejections due to the age and height (6 feet 5), I later found out indeed, it actually was only teenagers and toddlers who were learning gymnastics and no adults really was into it. With this information, my hunt didn’t stop. Weeks went by and one day I got lucky with a referral from a friend who said this guy Ted might be able to teach me. I called up Ted and somehow he said even though all his students are 5–10 year olds too, he was willing to teach me the basics.

Once I got the yes, I remembered feeling thrilled so I started spreading the news with all my friends. However, after telling everyone, I remember most of them just simply laughed at me or asked me, “Why are you doing this? Isn’t it a bit late to be a gymnast? You are going to look stupid, is anyone your age or height is even doing this? You are not physically able to do this, you are so lanky. There is no point, you are going to fail.” Like I always do, even though I was still afraid of looking a bit foolish and wasn’t sure that if I’d actually be able learn it at the time, I still somehow managed to ignored all judgements and fear and began my journey to become and lousy gymnast.

Now, fast forward a few weeks of basic gymnastic classes taken with my newly acquainted classmates (5 years old kids) and some consistent training on my own, I can now hold a handstand for a minute, perform a cartwheel and close in doing a back flip all on my own. Whoop! Even though I am still considered an amateur in measurement to my 5 year old classmates, but if comparing to the remaining 99% of the population, I think I can now call myself an expert at gymnastics.

Failure is the start of every success

This little gymnastic experience lead me in realization of one thing. That we are all living by rules and systems within society, and much of what governs most of our lives is not some natural order but “man made” rules and guidelines. And one of them that we blindly follow is that we at all times, should appear and present ourselves as “successful”. Now, in order to follow this guideline, we then cannot afford to fail or even somehow show glimpses of us failing. We should only show the “successful” side. Through time, subconsciously, this type of unconventional thinking has us developed a fear for failing and a fear to appear somewhat “unsuccessful”.

Think about it, the older we are, the least likely we are willing to try new things and make a fool of our selves right? How about this, when was the last time you posted on IG showing that you were failing at something? Never right? We often only show our most glamours and spectacular moments (Exotic travel photos, good looking gym selfies, bikini shots where we would never show our grandparents). In essence, we now only show the most “successful” or “appealing” state of ourselves. We all long to belong, to be accepted, to not be judged, to never be outcast and to not be undesirable. This is our human basic behavioral psychology instinct.

Where did this come from? Well, this instinct originated from our ancestor’s survival environment from the hunter-gatherer age. 12,000 years ago, in the hunter-gatherer age, any member of a tribe or group that showed signs of genetic “weakness” or had any type of genetic dysfunction were outcast out of the tribe and would have little to no chance to mate with others. Therefore, in order to survive, biologically we are wired with a longing to belong to a group or in today’s sense, society, so that we are more likely to mate with others to reproduce off-springs and pass on our genetic DNA. That is why we’re often anxious about the likelihood of being cut off, demeaned, or isolated. We fear being alone. In today’s modern world, we are embedded that showing any signs of “unsuccessful” or “failure” is equivalent to showing signs of “genetic weakness”.

However in the world that we live in today, by actually using this type of out dated thinking is actually prohibiting us from real individual success.

Being willing to fail (succeed) in who you really are and not trying succeed (fail) to be something you are not is not failure, it is the first step and pathway to success.

As Eloise Ristad says, “When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.” This type of conventional and out dated thinking can only limit us from our true potential. If we are often living in fear of failure and afraid of looking inferior amongst our peers, how can we ever achieve greatness? Tell me when was the first time you tried something challenging and got it right the very first time? Unless your name is Jesus or Buddha, never right? We are all doomed to fail before we succeed.

So why am I starting a blog?

Well, by the time you are reading this, I’ve probably have spent more than 10 hours on this and have edited this countless times as I am still wired to not wanting to make a fool out of my self. Which to a certain point is actually a good thing. We are holding ourselves accountable and trying to present the best version of ourselves. As long as it never reaches a point where the fear of failing will prohibit us from trying or learning anything new. As hypocritical as it may sound, I will still be posting the best looking pictures on my IG. But why I am starting a blog though?

Well it is because with a splash of my Type A Personality, I am always finding ways to better my self and recently, I have realized communication, either written or verbal may be one of the, if not most essential skill one can have in the information age we live in today. Now, being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and having an Introverted personality has always been very difficult for me to express my feelings, opinions and thoughts verbally. One of my favorite books this year was Ray Dalio’s memoir, Principals. In the book, he talks about his life principals and how he got to where he is today ( $150 billion in total assets under management). Within one of the chapters, he emphasized the importance of looking to nature and learn how reality works. Dalio explains success can easily be obtained from doing things that align most within your nature and not against it. So for me, in improving in communication, I have first chosen to harness the skill that aligns with my natural personality the most, writing.

Now putting on my investment logic hat, writing right now will be doubling my workload while promising no gain in income or generate any type of other monetary value. In this business metrics ROI perspective, writing is quite a silly way of using time. However, those are not the returns that I seek. There are other values in returns that I am actually looking to benefit from:

1. Improving as a writer so that I am able to transform my thoughts into words with precision, persuasion and inspiration. I truly believe in being able to effectively express your thoughts, ideas and vision with precision, persuasion and inspiration is a powerful tool and true art form. If we date back in time, all successful leaders, presidents, CEOs or activists were all equipped with the ability to communicate with some magnitude of precision, persuasion and inspiration, both verbally and non-verbally.
2. Developing a skill that can make me happy. In order to be happy we all need to feel understood, recognized and affirmed by our friends, family and romantic partners. All of us crave this, but without accurately expressing our true feelings and thoughts, how can we expect others to understand us and love us for who we really are? You see, allowing your friends and loved ones to understand who you are and what you makes of you as a person is a skill that requires practice as well.
3. Having a hobby that can make you smart. As much as I suck, I enjoy writing and this has become my hobby. It will be another learning process since it will be more than just journaling. I am holding my self accountable to produce somewhat valuable content so that I don’t waste any readers time. Well how does it make you smart? If you are not aware, learning a new skill or doing anything that requires intensive logical thinking like reading or writing has tremendous impact on our brain’s neurology. It heightens our brain’s neuron connectivity (I call them brain muscles fibers) as it involves several brain functions including phonemic awareness, visual and auditory processes, fluency, comprehension, creativity and many others. You will be amazed by the neurogenesis your brain generates when learning something new or just by consistently reading or writing.
4. Creating rarity and value that perhaps one day can be rewarded. Capitalism rewards people and things that are both rare and valuable. Take a person for example, one can make oneself rare by combing two or more “pretty good” aspects of them selves until no one has that same mix. For example, if you are “fit” and you add “good looking” to the mix, you may be able to become a swimsuit model. However, if you add another few elements, say: “verbal communication skills”, “social media marketing ability”, “health and diet expertise”, you can then perhaps become a famous online fitness coach or health and wellness influencer making hundreds and thousands a month. You see, the more “pretty good” elements that you have, the rarer and more valuable you are to society, hence, the more you can be rewarded. And my goal is to eventually develop as many “pretty good” mixes for me to offer in various different situations.
5. Hoping to one day be able inspire people and to help others. In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the last stage that motivate human behavior is self-actualization, which is the linear growth of an individual. But self-actualized individuals are not purely focused on internal gain; they appreciate the benefits of solving problems that affect others so as to improve this world. I believe the desire to help others is borne out of an our internal nature, which relates to our core human emotion, empathy. And right now, with all my basic needs in place (shelter, food, safety, relationships, love/belonging, self esteem), I hope slowly by little have the ability to a point where I am able to inspire and help others to reach their full potential.

I am at a point in my life where I actually love this feeling of being of the verge of failure or embarrassment as it means I’m in a position where I’m going to grow, learn and become stronger. I believe, with enough vision, discipline, persistence and consistency, we can all get better at whatever it is that we want to be good at. We can grow thick skin and learn to enjoy the struggle. As long as we don’t obey society’s man made guidelines of always needing to appear “successful” and being able to overcome the fear of failure and embarrassment, we are then all equipped with the fundamental ability to achieve greatness. After all, it is not like everything is rocket science, even if it may feel like it from time to time.

So, to close, here’s to taking another chance in life and having the curiosity for more. I can’t promise you that this blog will be worthy of your time, but I can promise you that I’ll pour my heart and soul into this as I understand your time, energy and focus is such a precious and valuable thing.

It’s been swell,

Ben.

Disclaimer: I am not a scholar, author or investment advisor. Anything that I may write are opinions of my own and many information may very much be borrowed from different sources within this universe…