Are you willing to find out what doesn't work in life?

​I read this from Seth Godin the other day:

"The very nature of innovation is to act as if - to act as if you're on to something, as if it's going to work, as if you have a right to be here. Along the way, you can discover what doesn't work on your way to finding out what does."

I read that and thought about an interview I did recently with my runner friend Meg Landymore. Meg said - and I paraphrase - she loves to push her body to the brink, maybe even to the point where it breaks. She does this, she said, so she can discover what doesn't work, and maybe learn how to fix the things that do break.

When she first said that, I thought, now that's sort of a crazy thing to say. Then she went out the day after that interview and ran over 140 miles in the smoky mountains faster than anyone ever had.

That's when I realized what she'd said wasn't just some running mantra. It was her attitude. It was her approach to life.

In his book Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey says, "The first step that leads to our identity in life is usually not I know who I am, but rather I know who I'm not. Process of elimination."

I think a lot of us are afraid of that process of elimination. We're afraid to show up and face risks as if we belong there - as if we have a right to be there - as if this risk is going to pay off.

I think we're afraid to show up believing something will work knowing full well that it might not. Knowing we might be taking a step to finding out who we are not on the way to finding out who we are.

Is it easier to wake up every day and believe we know who we are? Is it easier to wake up and force a life into this ideal of who we are - or who we're supposed to be - all to avoid the possibility something might backfire - something might fail - something might leaving us having to say, "shoot, that didn't work."

I don't know. I guess I've seen to many people land in a place of being content with the misery of being who they are all to avoid trying something that might tell them this is who you are not. People become content with their process in life all to avoid the process of elimination.

I've been that person.

But I think I'll write the boys a little note, and tell them, on my tombstone I want written, "He wasn't afraid to find out what didn't work on the way to finding out what did."

Maybe if I know that's going to be written on my tombstone when I die, I'll be a little more committed to finding out what doesn't work while I'm alive.