Life’s an Experiment: Here’s How You Can Experiment Your Way to Success
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
What are you working on?
How are you improving yourself?
Do you experiment a lot?
In answering the three questions above. Majority of people might be able to answer question 1 and 2 very well. But not able to answer question 3.
In reality, if you can’t answer question 3, there is no way you can answer question 1 and 2 correctly.
Because only through experimenting can you know if you are improving on yourself. And only through experimenting can you have something new to always work on?
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge… observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Denis Diderot.
The truth is majority of people have stopped experimenting on themselves. Rather they live each day on repetition without adding any meaningful activity to their day.
A friend of mine complains to me a lot about his work every day. How tired he is with his job and how it isn’t promising at all.
One day while having lunch together, I asked him what his plans were for himself. You guessed right if you say he doesn’t have any.
Who can blame him? No one. The only thing that happened is he has stopped experimenting on himself. Hence he lives each day on repetition.
In the pursuit of growth, continuous experimentation is key.
As Jack Dickerson put it experiment, experiment, experiment until it finally flows from within you. It is a hard road. But the result is also a deep inner satisfaction.
Where we are is as a series of experiment we have carried out with ourselves.
The current level of your business is how much experiment you have performed with it.
Where you are in your relationship is as a result of the experiment you have carried out on it.
Do you know why people get tired of a particular job after a while even though the salary is lucrative and big for them? It’s because there is no longer any experiment for them to handle.
Every part of your life is open for experimentation as long as the goal is to help you improve yourself.
Experimenting with yourself means learning new things and skills. Like learning a new language, getting a new degree. Writing a book, publishing an article, travelling around the world. And throwing yourself into the unknown irrespective of the outcome.
Life is trying things to see if they work. Ray Bradbury
The more you experiment, the more you get to try new things. To figure out what works best in life, we have to remember life is an experiment.
The moment we stop experimenting, the more we find things stale and bored. Hence it makes it difficult for us to try new things.
When we experiment, we improve.
I have a job that pays the bills. But I have been experimenting on myself by learning writing. Which is one of the articles you are reading right now? Also learning a new language with my Duolingo app, and getting an MSc degree at the same time.
Will everything work out fine? I don’t know. But I can tell you I will learn a thing or two from them if things don’t turn out fine. After all, our experience of things helps us in making good judgement. As Will Rogers put it Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Why do you think big companies keep reinventing themselves time after time? Growth.
Growth is what happens when you have carried out a series of experiment with yourself.
Even if you fail in your experiment you will learn something. The knowledge gained from the “failure” becomes part of the next test until you find what works best for your particular experiment.
Learning from simple mistakes or our failure is what helps propel us forward. And happy accidents only happen when we take the time to really learn from our failure.
As Ryan Holiday put it people rarely learn from their success but learn more from their failure.
What happens to businesses that refuse to carry out an experiment with their company? They become stale and get weed out from the system.
To stay fresh, constantly experiment. Says Jim Pallas
Success comes from a series of small wins. And as author peter sims put it in his book Little Bets that we must use experiment in order for small wins to emerge.
I once looked into what my friend who complains about his work does for a day. while in the office to better himself in anything. The truth is he does nothing other than the usual office work. And scroll through endless feeds on social media.
Growth doesn’t happen without experimenting. But to grow, experimentation is key.
You don’t get promoted if you don’t add more to your current skills.
In life, you can’t move past where you are if you are not experimenting on yourself.
The wealthiest men of this world experiment a lot. They aren’t scared to try out new things.
If you ask most smart or successful people where they learned their craft. they will not talk to you about their time in school. It’s always a mentor, a particularly transformative job, or a period of experimentation of trial and error. Ryan Holiday
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Tesla, Space X, Apple. And other top companies are where they are today because of the experiment they have carried out.
Some experiment might be successful and some might fail. But either way, it is a win/win for them because we learn more from our failures. And remember success hides problems.
“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life is all about constant and never-ending improvement. By choosing to live your life as an experiment, you are committing yourself to growth and development.
So take charge and don’t be afraid to experiment with your life.
What experiments are you carrying out on yourself?
How are you improving yourself every day?
What are you working on?
I do hope you find answers to these questions because as the saying goes, art is long, life is short. But the art of life is long enough if planned and well-executed.
