The most important life lesson we can learn from children

It’s interesting to see how children live their lives. When we were kids, things were so different — WE were so different — and we lose something when we become adults.

One of the biggest things we lose is our fearlessness. And that’s a shame because it robs us from achieving our goals.

Kids trip and fall. They touch hot stoves. They stick their fingers in electrical sockets. They sound hilarious when they screw up a sentence. They get bumped and bruised and their ratio of mistakes-to-successes is quite high.

Along the way, though, they soak up information and learn and become functioning adults. Each of those failures is a piece of invaluable information that they store away for the future.

Then something happens to us when we become adults

We become grown-ups. And somewhere along the way, our perception of risk increases, as does the high value we place on negative consequences. We no longer want to take on the pain of constant, unrelenting failure. We know that any failure could cost us physical pain or, more likely, financial pain or social pain.

We become fearful of failure. Sure, sometimes we cast it aside and do something fun and crazy like sky-diving but when it comes to making mistakes in life — in relationships, in our jobs — we don’t dare rock the boat.

But what if we pushed aside our fear of failure?

What would happen if we re-adopted the fearlessness we once had as kids? What would happen?

We’d potentially hurt ourselves.
We’d potentially face risks that most people wouldn’t want to face.
We’d potentially piss off a bunch of people.

But we’d also succeed. We’d learn. We’d grow. We’d accomplish so much more.

What fears are holding you back from pursuing a dream you have? What would happen if you pushed those fears aside?

Posted on February 1, 2012