Do you experiment?
In life? At work? In relationships? With yourself? Alone, or together with others?
I’ve not understood the importance of experimentation until just a few years ago. And I have areas where it’s easier to experiment, to play, to discover, and other areas in life, where there’s a resistance. A fear? Possibly. Probably, even. However. I do try. I experiment, more and more. I’ve let go of any lingering belief that I have to Know what will come, in order to even try something out. That I have to have the full plan in place, before I can even take one step. I don’t. And you don’t either.
We get to play around, dilly-dally, experiment. Try something out. If it didn’t work out as you thought, redesign and try again. Perhaps you got even farther from where you thought you’d get – redesign again. Reiterate. Over and over again.
And as Tay Lopez says, never run an experiment longer that eighteen months. After eighteen months, you either know that it works, and then you can decide on whether to keep on doing it. (But it’s no longer an experiment then, right!) If it doesn’t work. Call it quits. Regardless of sunk cost, let it go. It’s not worth it, any more.
Run a diet, try being a vegan for a month? Have fun with a new exercise plan. Sign up for a marathon, and get running! See how many books you can read in a year. Take a leave of absence from work and travel the world. Accept a challenge to blog daily for a hundred days in a row. See if you can grow enough vegetables to be self-sustained for the summer, for the fall, for nine months out of a year, or perhaps for a full year? See what happens if you don’t buy anything new (food excluded) for a full year. Say Yes to everyone who asks you something?
There is no end to the number of ways we can experiment in and with life.
Go for it. Experiment!
Welcome to my humble abode, where the underlying tone centers around being gentle to oneself. On Sundays I share thoughts on how I do gentle, and I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please subscribe to updates so you won’t miss out on future posts in this series.