Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I'm your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you, episode 198 today. And you might not want to hear this, but the only person who never makes mistakes is the one that never does anything, and I hope that's not you. If you're struggling to make progress, if you're struggling to get to a better version of yourself, if you're struggling to further your lifestyle, then this is the episode for you, because and it's a pretty bold statement but mistakes are proof that you're trying and that the only way to avoid them is to avoid action, and that itself is real failure. I'll say that again before we start Mistakes are proof that you're trying. The only way to avoid them is to avoid action, and that's real failure. It's going to be a deep one. It's going to be a real, real, straight down the line one as well. So buckle up. If you need to hear it, this is the episode for you. Of course, if you do enjoy these episodes, make sure you jump down below, hit like, subscribe, comment. We can continue the conversation. Share it with someone if you enjoyed as well, we're going to roll the intro and we're going to dive straight in. Let's do it All right.

So basically, if you didn't really catch that, what I'm trying to say is like we need to be making mistakes. If you're not making mistakes, how are you expecting to make progress? Mistakes in the moment suck, they are horrible, they make us feel bad, they make us feel horrible. We get the you know the sinking gut feeling, but if you're making mistakes, it means you are taking action. Now, the idea is, when we make a mistake is we don't want to be making it again. So we need to learn from those mistakes, and that's really important because that's going to be a pivotal moment in your learning and your growth.

But I've made heaps of mistakes. I've made lots of mistakes. It might be due to a lack of revision, it might have been to a lack of accountability, lack of ownership, or I've just been lazy, or I genuinely just made a mistake because you just didn't know. And when you make those mistakes, especially if they're big, big impact mistakes, then you learn very quickly. If they're small mistakes, sometimes they can turn into bad habits because you just let them fly. So why do mistakes matter? Well, mistakes are a sign. As I said at the start of this episode, they are a sign of action. When we make mistakes, it is because we are trying to do something. Sometimes we make a mistake because we're rushing, sometimes we make a mistake because we don't actually understand, but sometimes mistakes come because taking risks or we're stepping out of our comfort zone, and that's because we're in uncharted territory for ourself.

So how can you expect to be successful in a space that you've never done anything in, that you've never had any experience, that you've never tried before? I mean, if you can, great. If you can go through it, blazing awesome. But there is a high chance that things aren't going to go as planned. You'll make a mistake, you'll slip up, but how do you roll with those punches right? So every successful person has a trail of failures or mistakes behind them, but they also have the courage to keep going. Imagine if Elon Musk gave up after the first time. The Tesla didn't work. I mean, there's so many examples of this.

The other thing is, when it comes to why mistakes matter, is the fear of failure? Fear is probably the biggest reason why I have slowed to do things. But when you start to size things up when you understand a good example of this is just in my business. When you understand your numbers, when you understand how your business operates, when you understand how you're growing, when you understand what's going on this applies to anything in life when you understand the situations of who you are, where you are and what you're doing, things come along. Where you know that this is making you uncomfortable, that you're scared to take the next step because it's unknown, and you get that feeling which is kind of like half butterflies, half nerves, half worry, half doubt, a bit of everything. But that's the feeling because you know you're going into this territory, which is exciting, it's nerve wracking, it's scary, it's uncomfortable, but it's exciting at the same time.

Again, right, and these are the moments which change your life. And how many times have you hesitated when you've had these moments because you didn't want to mess up, you didn't want to stuff up, you didn't want to be a failure. But when you have processed through, progressed through and made the decision to do it, how did you turn out afterwards? The hindsight was great, right, you look back, yeah, there was a few little bumps, whatever, but they were small, minor things, even if they were big issues in the moment. Now, two years later, you look back and you think it wasn't that bad. You've got bigger fish to fry now.

So the fear of failure is a huge thing that, you know, tries to stop us from making mistakes, but the problem is the mistakes. They're going to outweigh the fear of failure every time. You know, unless you're doing something which is being silly and being stupid, like you know, speeding in a car and trying to, you know, weave between traffic and stuff, that's not a mistake, that's just being stupid, right? A mistake is when you are driving and you've had to swerve because something's run across you and you hit someone else. That's a mistake, right, and you have to work through that situation. Good example of a mistake out of our control, right?

The other thing is consequences of inaction. If you're avoiding mistakes, if you're avoiding progress, you're basically by avoiding mistakes we're avoiding progress. Exactly what I said. Right, you stay safe, but you stay stuck. There's nothing great about being stuck. There's nothing great about being very defensive and just, you know, pushing back, pushing back, pushing back, because you'll never grow, you don't let anything in, and there's a lot of people that live their lives with a closed mind because they don't want other people to tell them or give them ideas, or give them inspiration or suggest to them how they could potentially live their life. It's not about that. They want them to live their life the way they are. It's like they just want to tell other people that, hey, this works for me, it might work for you, give it a go. And a lot of the time we hesitate because we like our little bubble, we like our comfort zone, we like where we are. But I guarantee you, when you start to spread your wings, get outside of your comfort zone, you will just blossom. You will absolutely blossom. Start small, take steps and make it happen. So what are the benefits of actually making snakes One? They teach us lessons, right, and lessons is what's going to help us grow. We're going to become a better version of ourselves. We're going to become a better version that prepares us for challenges in the future.

For instance, a failed business idea has taught numerous people more about business than any course ever or book or study could do. When I worked, when I sorry, when I was in university, you know I have done a number of different assignments, whether it's relevant to building a business or actually getting into IT, but you know, actually getting out there and building your own business, you learn three times quicker, 10 times quicker, sometimes a hundred times quicker, because things are just happening as they happen. You're in a controlled environment. When you are in controlled environments, such as high school or university or getting taught something, but when you're actually taking action, learning, it's real time. You're getting all the feedback straight away and it's lessons, it's understanding, it's wisdom, it's knowledge, it's experience all these things that are going to get you ahead quicker. Yeah, it sucks right now when you go through those moments, but two years later you're going to thank yourself for going through those moments.

Mistakes also build resilience. When we make mistakes, we yeah, and once we've bounced back, we bounce back stronger, and every time doing that, we get a little bit tougher, we get a little bit more resilient, we know how to handle ourselves, we become more confident. We know then how to take action next time, we know how to move forward and you just basically build this stack of experience. The problems that I'm dealing with now, like in my business, you know, like I can't even think of them. So let me say that again, the problems that I'm experiencing now, compared to the problems that I've experienced in the past. I can't even think about the problems in the past, like just little things, like how do I actually send postage right? Like at the start, that is really scary. But you know, now we send, you know, 200 packages a week. It's like just whatever, don't have to think about it. So these problems become very minuscule as you make progress. But there'll be more problems. So then you get more comfortable knowing okay, I know how to solve those problems. So why is it any different solving this problem?

The other thing is making mistakes. It fosters innovation. It that trial and error, that pushing, that trying to work through a problem. It forces you to work with constraints. It forces you to think outside the box. It forces you to try different things in different ways because we want to get to the outcome, and that's great. It fosters innovation, which creates really great advancement, whether it's for yourself or for other people as well.

With all this, you know, there's a lot of other things that we should consider. It's like embracing mistakes. You know, when we shift our mindset around it, it does help us, you know, get through them easily, and we spoke about this last week as well. So, instead of asking what if I fail? But what will I learn to do? What will this get me? What are the opportunities from this? When we apply a learning and adjustment, continuous improvement mindset, that itself again helps us realize that all these little things, they're going to help us get to a better situation, become a better version of ourselves.

All those different things and the other thing is sometimes effort over perfection is what we need when we look at mistakes. We don't want to make mistakes because we want everything to be perfect. But if everything was perfect, it'd be boring. Nothing would really be the you know, the value wouldn't be there. Because when we take effort, we learn how to do new things, and that in itself is very valuable when we recognize that we had to do all those things to make the progress. If we could just do everything perfectly, you wouldn't feel like you're growing. You wouldn't feel like you're learning. My first podcast it was rough, but it's still better than if I didn't make one, because there was nothing there to look at, right.

So maybe some additional examples for you for bracing mistakes, personal growth, learning from poor decisions in relationships or finances, right Professional growth, turning career missteps into opportunities for reinvention, for trying new things, better processes and creative growth. You know maybe how trial and error led to refining skills in art or writing or entrepreneurship or building a business right. Mistakes are part of the process. It isn't about avoiding mistakes, it's about learning from them and moving forward. And the other thing is by not being willing to make a mistake. It is actually a bigger risk to take inaction than it is to take action by doing nothing. It guarantees nothing If you do nothing. It guarantees no progress. By doing something, even if it's not perfect, we actually guarantee growth because we learn, we get a little bit more experience. Therefore, we will grow.

So my challenge to you is what mistake have you been avoiding because you're afraid to fail? What area of your life have you been trying to get push into but you're scared you're going to make a mistake and that you're afraid that you will fail. What's one thing that you can do and I challenge you to take a leap in that Try and take a stepping stone into that. I'm not saying dive in with no idea how deep it is, but just start to tread water a little bit. See what can come from this. The other question that I'll leave you with is what's one mistake you've made recently that has taught you something valuable? Reflect on that and then apply it to the first one, about how you can actually now take steps into something new uncharted territories, areas that you've never done before. If you want to try something new, do it, give it a shot. You don't have to commit to it, but give it a shot right.

When I changed my business model to you know, pure clothing, a lot of people thought I was crazy. Going the wholesale model outsourcing, washing, hiring staff. You know people said it's not feasible. Here we are still. It's still working and there's a lot of things we've still got to fix and we're changing it, we're adapting it, we're learning each week, learning daily. We're making progress.

Imagine if I didn't do it. Would I still actually be around? Would my business still be in the position to be thriving? And we've grown 80% year on year for the last four years. So less about me, that's just more the point. To get the point across, please ask yourself, you know, what's something that you've been avoiding that you can take action on, and what was one mistake you've made recently that actually turned out to be something of value. Ask yourself that. Let me know in the comments. If you want to share it, we can continue the conversation. If you enjoyed this, please like subscribe, comment and share it with someone else. It would mean the absolute world to me, appreciate you being here. You have a wonderful day, cheers.