Why the experts have the question wrong

Ok, now I've got your attention.

We all know the question. Shall we all say it in chorus--"What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?" I hate that question. Loath it. Struggled to answer it so that I could "unlock" what I was meant to do with my life.

I struggled with this question for years. Depending on how you're defining fail I discovered many answers to that question. What would I do if I couldn't fail? And, appropriately enough, I came up with Fantasyland answers such as flying without an airplane, skiing the alps as a beginner skier with no training, swimming a coral reef with no oxygen tank so that I never had to come up for air. Stuff that clearly couldn't happen in real life. The books I read told me I wasn't approaching the question properly - that I had to imagine things that were possible, but I was still afraid to do. Come up with something that you're afraid to do, remove the failure, and unlock your passion. I have an answer for them - bull@^&%!

When you take away failure, you remove passion.

Life coaches, teachers, and others like to remove failure because it supposedly removes the "mental blocks" that people have if they know that they could fail. My answer for that - if you're afraid you're going to fail so much that you won't even begin, then it isn't your passion. You don't care about it enough. It isn't worth it to you to put everything on the line and try anyway.

How do I know? Personal experience. Law School.

As a first year law student failure and I became friends. I failed a lot. Even when my work received a passing grade, I felt like I failed because I was a naturally high achieving student so a grade less than a B felt like failure. I questioned my decision to go to law school. I questioned my ability to complete the program. I toyed with the idea of quitting - many, many, many times. I grew discouraged. I remember telling my first year professor that I was only getting 65s on my essays and I should be doing better. His answer - I should be glad I was consistently writing 65s because it was better than many of my peers were doing and I was doing just fine. (I refrained from asking him how the kool-aid tasted and where I could get some.) Even after I passed my first year I continued to entertain the idea of quitting many, many, many times. Failure continues to accompany me along this journey. I still make mistakes when I answer questions. I still have professors tell me "no, go back and try again." Failure is still an option. I still have the demon exam known as the California Bar Exam to pass when I am finished with the coursework.

The possibility of failure continues even after law school ends and I enter practice. All lawyers know that they can prepare and represent their client well and at the end of the day it still comes down to the opinions of 12 carefully selected people. There's even a t-shirt that says "My case depends on 12 people too unlucky to get out of jury duty."

So why do I persist?

Because I care. It is my magnum opus, my great work.

Failure - definitely a possibility. But success doesn't taste as sweet without the knowledge that working for it meant something. That is the role of failure. Failure is the "I dare you" that life packages with challenges.

Because a man's reach should exceed his grasp - else what's a heaven for?

(Robert Browning)

Here's the question for the experts - What is worth enough to you that you will risk failure to achieve it?

Enough of "Simple" Already

Today I had it.

It came in the form of a title of a blog post - "4 Simple Ways to Stick to a Meal Plan"

And my inner 5 year-old REBELLED!

"Simple this, Simple that, Simplify in 4, 8, 10 easy steps. Simple steps. Get Real!"

When my inner 5 year old gets annoyed enough to speak up rather than just whinging and doing her own thing, I generally listen. It saves time in the end. Not listening leads to messes and broken plans and a general sense of global failure, so listening earlier rather than later reaps huge benefits.

And after calming down long enough to open a new post page, I listened - and learned.

Creativity is not simple. It can not be boiled down into a paint-by-numbers experience or existence. It needs space to grow and become itself. Following a simple anything takes the joy away from the creative part of life. Following a simple this or an easy that in a paint-by-numbers fashion takes away the ability to grow and learn. What happens when Step 4 would work better as Step 2 in my world? What if I don't like Step 3? Or find that I need 4 and 1/2 steps or 7 steps instead of 6? What happens then? You forget I'm not wired like everyone else. I need an example of a finished product, but then get out of the way and let me figure out how to put the design together. It will get there, and it will probably be right. Step by step is great for assembling IKEA furniture, but not necessarily for designing a life style.

I listened.

I learned.

I think I'll be unsubscribing from a few blogs - unless my inner 5 year old thinks that would be too harsh. She's a generally forgiving soul.

So when did the light turn on?

I wrote the essay assignment I had been dreading. The its-so-big-its-going-to-eat-me essay assignment. The one that I fall asleep and dream that I write my @$$ off and when I get it back it has a big red 0 on it. That essay.

So, I did what I always do when I need to write a big assignment. I pretended it didn't exist. I worked on other assignments. I worked on my brief - which also turned into an its-so-big-its-going-to-eat-me assignment. I cleaned the house - sort of. Because everything I picked up was either related to the brief, related to the essay assignment, or notes for class. Which only caused me to worry more about the its-so-big-its-going-to-eat-me essay assignment.

Then I attended graduation. And I saw my LAW professor, who had only good things to say about my teachability and my scholarship. (Did I mention I LOVE my LAW professor??) Which inspired me to go and write the other essay assignment I had to write. These things come at you fast in 3L. It seems like there's an essay almost every week, so if you get behind, its easy for there to be three or four hanging out in the dropbox waiting. I felt pretty good about finishing that assignment. So I worked on the next one. And felt pretty good about that one too. So then I decided it was time to get off my butt and write the big assignment that had been hanging out in the dropbox for almost a month.

So I opened it and started to write.....and write......and write. And as I wrote, I realized that I was not struggling to write this essay. It was just writing itself. Bit by Bit. Piece by Piece. I was writing it, without really worrying about it or thinking about it very much. It was just writing itself, as though my fingers were just transcribing what the essay wanted to say about itself. It was long. It took a lot of time. I think I will probably get my usual 65 - but I'm okay with that because at least it felt solid and not horrible.

It was while I was driving home last night, that I realized that the light had finally turned on for this class. Every course has a point where you say "oh yeah, I got this." Corporations I had from only a few weeks in. I'm sure it didn't hurt that my sister is in finance and that was all I heard at the dinner table from the time my sister started her MBA program until she finished, and all the best books on leadership and planning are written by business people, so when I started reading about option this, and fiduciary duty that, it wasn't horribly foreign. Professional Responsibility was another. This one, however, was a struggle all the way along until now.

But it still remains a mystery why at some point the hammer falls and it goes from being a foreign language to being something understandable. It always causes me to ask myself the question 'so when did the light turn on?'

Top ten ways you (and the rest of the world) know you're a 3L

10. You have the most competitive law school bookstores set up in your internet favorites list, so it is easy to "comparison shop" for your textbooks.

9. You no longer believe that you are going to fail out when you get a 65 on your essay.

8. Your significant other has added Law and Order to the list of banned shows because he is tired of hearing you shout "objection" before the TV attorneys and then listing off all the reasons why the evidence should not be admitted. (And he doesn't want to hear the explanation of why either.)

7. The kids know that unless mommy has "evidentiary proof" of completed homework there will be no ice cream, cookies, pudding, or other dessert-type items after dinner.

6. The kids have informed you that the promise to: [get a dog / go to Disneyland / take a trip to Hawai'i / insert your own here] is not considered by them to be a social promise and they expect performance in return for allowing you to [stay late at the law library / not interrupt during study time / miss the school picnic so you can study for finals / fill in the blank] so that you can graduate.

5. You sometimes think you see the light at the end of the tunnel, but you're not sure if it's really the light or just wishful thinking.  There is also the possibility that it is the headlight of an oncoming train...

4. The old philosophers got it wrong - the road to hell is not paved with good intentions, it is paved with hypotheticals, fact patterns and drafts of Legal Writing assignments - and the floor of your study provides evidence of that fact.

3. The house is cleaner than it has been in over 2 years - because the options are clean the house or work on the moot court brief.

2. Community Property is just a yearlong example of all the reasons why marriage is still a property contract.

1. The professors see you at the Barrister Ball or other student/alumni event and say, "didn't you graduate last year?"