Not afraid to fail

There's a book I read a couple of months ago that changed my perspective on learning and experiencing, so I thought it would be appropriate to share here.

The book is called The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. I heard about it on NPR, and then I checked it out of the library of course. The author is looking for happiness in a number of countries around the world. I was most intrigued by his exploration of Iceland; the author finds that Iceland is a very happy nation. They drink and play hard, but also work hard. However, he discovers that Icelandic people do not have a career path in a traditional American sense - the people of Iceland have many careers, and Iceland has most artists per capita. Through talking with people, Weiner discovers that there are two reasons for this. The first one is the generous social net that allows people to experiment with their jobs/careers because they are assured they will not starve if they don't have a job. The second one (and it probaly springs from the first one, in part at least) is that Icelandic culture does not look down on failure. If you failed, at least you tried, at least you went for it and gave it a shot. In fact, artistic expression of any kind is encouraged in Iceland. This goes a long way to explain some of Bjork's more outlandish performance-art-like music/videos/outfits.


So even though I am not striving to be the next Bjork, I am now adopting this attidute of not fearing failure in my quest for good living and good learning. There's this mosaic that I was planning on making for longer than I care to admit. I saw this seahorse mosaic in one of the library books I checked out, and it was perfect for using up the shells I had laying around my apartment from a trip I took some time before. I also had a bunch of beach glass that was going to be useful for a change. I realized what made me procrastinate on this project (this would also be my first attempt at mosaic work ever), was the fear that I will never match the finished project in the book. The fear of failing was paralyzing me; I was not motivated, and I was not excited about the whole endevour. Only after I read the book was I able to recognize that the fear of failure was what was stalling me all this time. And even though I have to keep reminding myself that it is okay if my mosaic does not turned out to be as pretty as the one in the book, I am able to go forward, to make that uncomfortable leap of faith and get on with my mosaic making. Maybe I'll post the two pictures side by side - my humble, first-time-ever-try mosaic, and the inspiration mosaic that started it all. And maybe I'll use Flickr for that :)