How many experiments did Thomas Edison attempt before he invented the light bulb? The answer, according to Wayne Dyer is 4000. 3999 times Thomas Edison tried and failed. Mistakes and failure. Mistakes and failure. How could he possibly deal with all those mistakes? All that failure?

Answer: he didn’t tell himself he was making mistakes and failing. He told himself, “I’ve learned 3999 ways how not to make a light bulb!”

The Truth About Learning Curves

If we are going to learn how to do anything important, we are going to make lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of mistakes. The sooner we get over the story that mistakes are terrible and something we need to be ashamed of, the sooner we’re going to get to enjoy basking in the glory of successes, large and small.

When I’m teaching a workshop, one of the first things I do is teach the participants not to say “I’m sorry” when they make a mistake, but to say instead “I’m sexy!” Try it for yourself right now if you can. Think of a mistake you made then either think to yourself or say to yourself “I’m sexy!”

Notice any change in how you feel?  Groovy!  You just learned something that could change the rest of your life.

Now making a mistake doesn’t “have” to make you feel stupid or inadequate or embarrassed.  Now, making a mistake can be part of the flow of learning and even fun.  This is a HUGE transformation!  And you did it by just changing one little story you have been chanting to yourself.

I learned this technique at an improvisation class and it has served me well ever since. I share this technique everywhere I go, even in Bali with very shy students. The first time I taught this technique I said, “I don’t know if this will translate.” Boy, did it translate! They howled with laughter. For the days we spent together we were all very sexy indeed. If one of us forgot to say it, someone else would holler out, “You’re sexy!”  We would all laugh together. Every single time. The joke never lost its appeal.

Taking Ourselves To Seriously

Here are some generalizations: we all tend to take ourselves too seriously. We all tend to think everybody else cares about our mistakes as much as we do. We all tend to think we should be able to do whatever we set out to do the first time perfectly. We do not give ourselves any time for a learning curve.

The truth about learning curves is that there always is one, no matter what we’re learning, no matter how old we are, no matter where we are. I wrote a song called “Don’t Give Up” and one of the verses says: “There’s a curve in every learning. Sometimes we’re first, sometimes we’re last. It doesn’t serve us to be yearning to be perfect. Put that in the past. Don’t give up!”

My husband Murray and I are hosting an Internet radio talk show called The Funnymooners on Real Coaching Radio Network. We are making lots of mistakes. We try not to repeat them, but we are not holding any impossible ideal that somehow we’re going to be able to do this new project perfectly the first time, or the second time, or ever.

Progress, Not Perfection

Our goal is progress, not perfection. We want to learn as we go, to laugh as we learn, and to model a relationship that works and plays.

Spread the word! Teach this to your family or your partner or your coworkers or strangers in the coffee shop. This is another simple yet transformational technique. Just by changing the story of “Oh, no!” to “Oh boy!”, you change your body chemistry, your vibration, your immune system, your brain’s ability to solve problems and your ability to absorb love.

So go out there and be sexy!  If you need some more help with this, you might want to tune ain and particpate in our conversation about Owning Our Own Farts on The Funnymooners tonight.  If you missed it, you can listen to the show by clicking here xxxsign up for one of my coaching programs.  Check out my Coaching page at www. xxx

Blessings,

Vicki

P.S.   Uncle! The spammers have found me!  I have had to discontinue allowing comments on this blog because I’ve been getting up to thirty comments a day from spammers.  I do want to know what you are thinking about these articles, so please email me at vicki@outrageousvisions.com.

Discussed on “The Funnymooners!” Every Wednesday at 6 p.m. PDT. Click HERE to get a reminder. Here is the link to the internet radio/video station.

On Wednesday, May 12, my husband Murray and I launched our Internet radio show called The Funnymooners on Real Coaching Radio Network.  We are now international stars!

During the show, which was fraught with technological challenges by the way, Murray brought up the topic of Tone. He first used this word with me when we were just at the beginning stages of our relationship. I was messing with the stereo and having some trouble and I said something to him with a little irritation in my voice. He’d been walking down the steps, stopped, turned around and came back to the top of the steps and said, in a very friendly voice, “Are you giving me Tone?”

I take a stand for treating everyone respectfully at all times. I do not give myself permission to leak my frustration on other people with an irritating or condescending tone of voice.

So, when my sweet Murray let me know I had been speaking disrespectfully to him, I was grateful. I don’t want to get away with this behavior. I was also grateful that he gave me this feedback in such a kind manner. He made it easy for me to admit my mistake, to own my own fart, and change my behavior immediately.

I sheepishly admitted that I had been giving Tone, and then asked my question again respectfully.

What happens when you practice something?

Tone is everywhere. Parents talking to children, children talking to each other, married people talking to each other — it is a very easy habit to get into.

The more we practice talking with Tone, the better we get at it. The more we allow people to talk to us with Tone, the more this disrespectful behavior gets normalized. We get so we don’t even notice when we’re giving tone or when we are receiving it.

Tone is enormously destructive to a relationship. Most of our communication is nonverbal; that is it’s not the words we say but how we say them and what our body is doing when we say them that communicates our true meaning.

Murray and I have a deal. We have a zero tolerance policy about Tone. We don’t let one sentence escape that is carrying a load of disrespect without being challenged. We might say “Ow!” We might say, as Murray said that first time, “Are you giving me tone?”

We don’t want to get used to giving or receiving Tone. That means when we’re angry about something, we have to own our anger and speak it clearly. We don’t get to leak our anger through sarcasm, irritation, or contempt.

This is one of the main reasons our relationship works as well as it does. Let me repeat that: taking this stand against Tone creeping into her conversation keeps our communication clear, clean, and connected. If you are going to take on one habit to improve your relationship with anyone, I would recommend you take on the habit of zero tolerance for tone.

Bad Habit Swapping

If you are guilty of giving people Tone, which everyone is guilty of, and you want to stop doing that right now, here’s what you need to do:

Go to the person or persons on whom you have been leaking your occasional disrespect, or contempt upon, and tell them, “I have a bad habit that I am taking on. I have a bad habit of talking to people disrespectfully by giving them Tone. I’m going cold turkey on this habit, and I will no longer be giving anyone Tone.”

“I am not a perfect person; I am a human being. That means I will not be perfect in my recovery of giving people Tone. Here is what I would like you to do if I accidentally leak my anger on you by giving you Tone: please say “Rubber chicken.”

Why have someone say rubber chicken? Because it’s pretty hard to stay mad at someone when they’re saying rubber chicken. If someone has said something to you with tone and you turn to them smile and say rubber chicken, you get to shift everything. While you were opponents a moment before, now you’re partners who love each other and want only the best for each other.

I dare you to give this a try. I dare you to take the stand with your family, your coworkers and your partner — especially with anyone to whom you have been dropping Tone bombs, as it were.

Whatever we practice we get good at, and we are always practicing something. We are practicing being impeccable with our word, or we are practicing dumping our junk on anybody who happens to be in the vicinity.

If you want more of this kind of discussion, check out our radio show on Real Coaching Radio Network. It’s on every Wednesday at 6 PM PDT.

Blessings,

Vicki

P.S.   Uncle! The spammers have found me!  I have had to discontinue allowing comments on this blog because I’ve been getting up to thirty comments a day from spammers.  I do want to know what you are thinking about these articles, so please email me at vicki@outrageousvisions.com.