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Growing and learning new things implies stepping out of our comfort zone. True differentiation and growth is achievable only if you are willing to dive into new areas¹ and try things that may work or not. As a consequence, learning something new always implies the risk of failure.

Several authors write about the importance of failure. If you never risk failure –if you never fail– then you aren’t trying hard enough, you are not learning. As Dan Norris writes in Create or Hate:

If you aren’t regularly failing, you aren’t seeking a new destination. You are following a predictable path that doesn’t lead to anything new and you are learning nothing. You aren’t creating anything either. In other words, you are failing. You are failing to grow and failing to improve and failing to realize your full potential.

Part of the problem is we often forget that stepping out of our comfort zone generates… discomfort. The romantic view we had about our pleasant journey towards our goals gets shattered by reality.

We need to plan our actions in such way that we push ourselves enough to make progress, but don’t strain so much that the effort becomes unsustainable. James Clear calls this the magical zone of long-term growth.

We also need to overcome our ego. We don’t like to fail. At least I don’t. Do you know people that publish their failures on their Facebook timeline? Our ego is so treacherous we can end up creating a narrative rationalizing our behaviour, explaining to ourselves why remaining comfortable, not daring, is the sensible alternative. Steven Pressfield, in his book The War of Art, calls this The Resistance.

Face your fears. Be bold and accept enough risk to make progress, but don’t be reckless or behave like a madman. Be smart and have a safety net. And then, dare to do things that can fail.

In a hypothetical situation, most people would say that they will respect other people’s point of view even if they don’t agree with it or don’t understand it.

In practice, however, this is hardly so. We have a hard time understanding why others don’t share our point of view, specially when those points of view influence laws, political decisions, or challenge the way we live or think. It can affect our mood, even provoke angry reactions and harsh comments.

Not convinced? An example: What is your position regarding gun control? What do you think of the opposite position? How about same-sex marriage? What do you think of people that don’t share your point of view?

Empathy is usually associated with sharing and relating to the feelings of others. But it doesn’t stop there. Empathy is at the very center of understanding other people’s points of view.

When we have trouble understanding someone else, or why somebody acts the way she does, consider what Seth Godin writes about Empathy:

Empathy doesn’t involve feeling sorry for someone. It is our honest answer to the question, why did they do what they did?” (…)

The useful answer is rarely, “because they’re stupid.” Or even, “because they’re evil.” In fact, most of the time, people with similar information, similar beliefs and similar apparent choices will choose similar actions. So if you want to know why someone does what they do, start with what they know, what they believe and where they came from.

Learning to employ empathy to better understand others, and to be better understood ourselves is a skill worth acquiring.

This article by Paul Jun helped me realize why I crave for writing, and why it helps me so much. Worth reading.