Ra’Co Tip: Mistakes

Make a lot of mistakes so you can learn

Making mistakes is part of the journey of life and in some way is the more educational route. Often you will learn a new life lesson along the way. But so many of us get caught up in the concept of perfection forgetting that perfection doesn’t lead to a rounded experience overall and that allowing mistakes to happen via risk is often the most important hidden reward.

Make a lot of mistakes so you can learn

Remember to be conscious as your mistake is made, or to reflect on it after the fact if you are not aware during. Be thoughtful about honoring your time and energy required to figure out how you got there and how you will get out of it. Often your intentional path will be adjusted based on your new found learnings.

RaCo Life Definition An act or thought that unintentionally deviates from what is correct, right, or true. 

RaCo Life Direct Experience

 

I left Hospitality Services, Inc work full time for myself building a design studio and to give it a try with a business partner and best friend. We had dreams of building a product line in her namesake and creating a sustainable business. She had no business experience or investment capital and she was weary about getting involved. I pushed her to do something out of her comfort zone and to focus on sweat equity instead of HEARING her say, “No.” The end result was what you would expect; a loss of a 12 year old friendship and a product line in her name that she had no desire to do anything with. We parted ways.

Learning: What I learned from this was to listen better and to really HEAR people. I get it now when someone says, “No” and I back away willingly.

My new path due to my mistake: I realized my friend and I had co-dependent friendship that wouldn’t stand the test of time, and letting it go enabled me to walk away and build a new set of healthy friendships. One of those relationships was Kurt. Another piece of this was realizing that I didn’t want to have a lifestyle product line or to invest in building a brick n’ mortar operation. I wanted to be free from all boundaries to travel and explore. I moved to London right after the end of our business, then onto Ithaca, Beacon, New York City and finally Guatemala.

Everything in Life is a Practice

In life, it seems everything is a practice, and no matter what decision or choice we are faced with the practice part is the constant:

  • It is a practice to stay and a practice to go when it comes to my career.
  • It is a practice to be a parent, but the practice also to find a different way without children.
  • It is a practice to love someone, and also a practice to live with them every day.
  • It is a practice to work with a client, but it is a practice to not have any clients.
  • It is a practice to have a family and to have family obligations, and a practice to have a family and not be close.

We are definitely in a ‘searching’ phase of our lives. Some of it might be indecision or misdirection, but a big part of it is a balance. We want to achieve the ultimate level of success by giving ourselves both time and dollars. It has seemed like pushing away from all that we know and graduating to a level of thinking that is not widely supported is both good and bad, but either way, any decision we make is a practice.

Our day to day practice has always put experience first instead of responsibility. We often see responsibility as a roadblock to creativity and one that stifles our opportunity to grow, but we have found recently it does not have to be the case. Responsibility can actually act as a set of boundary lines to help push us forward in a directed manner…almost establishing ground rules.

Perhaps a bit esoteric, but in the months and years to come this will be honed in, refined and ultimately a perfected daily practice; we will master our ability to ‘practice’ over time.

Raco-Life-080000-Kurt-at-RhinzijiPhoto taken at Ren Zhi Ji Mount Baldy. Kurt stands near the infamous Roshi.

Kurt practices Zen Buddhism and maintains at least 2 sesshins a year at the Ithaca Zen Center.