Failing faster

Recently I watched my first videos, which I made in 2019.

Urgh! You might know that feeling of embarrassment that comes up when you look at old photos of yourself. You see a past version of yourself.

I feel the same way when I look at pictures I took many years ago. Many of them have survived in my family’s home and still decorate their walls. I am sure that I did my best then and that I went to the limits of my possibilities.

If I had stopped making videos a year ago, I would not be where I am today.

When I first heard the expression “failing faster” a light bulb went on.

That was a real eye opener for me.

As so often progress comes with a slight change of attitude!

The “Fail faster” was not meant defeatist or self-ironic.

It does not mean that I am resigned: “I’m going to fail anyway, it’s no use. I won’t even start there.

On the contrary: it is a objective observation that failure is part of learning something new. And the sooner you start, the sooner you learn.

There is also this sentence that appears again and again, that he who does not fail, does not learn.

When I look at my work today and compare myself with other artists, the same knockout ball hits me. I see how far away I still am and feel immediately discouraged. But we only feel discouraged because we see the whole distance between the desired goal and the actual state.

We become emotional and think: I’ll never make it! And poof! a feeling of dejection arises.

It had been clear to me for a long time that I often get in my own way when I paint, but I didn’t know how to change that.

Everything is Mindset. Rethinking. Thinking in a different direction.

Faster failures lever out our perfectionist fantasies and declare: Take it, you’ll paint bad pictures, make boring videos and look awkward on camera. So what! So what!

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