“Life is a narrative that you have a hand in writing.” — Harriette Anne Klauser

Were you one of those kids who missed recess or were required to stay after school to write on the chalkboard about your latest rule-breaking (“transgression” if you attended Catholic school)? Or did you feel empathy for your friend whose hand showed signs of cramping after ten iterations of writing “I will not talk in class,” while knowing you’d been talking too. Or maybe you felt justice was served for the kid sentenced to 500 repetitions of “I will not throw snowballs on the playground.”

Most likely, the irony of these punishments was not lost on the perpetrators or the witnesses. The next day, you and your friend still talked in class, but you collaborated on new ways to avoid getting caught: passing notes or using hand signals. And the snowball thrower simply waited until the playground attendant was distracted or delayed the attack and threw the stockpiled snowballs after school…at you!

These familiar scenarios illustrate how punishments designed around hand-written sentence repetitions don’t work when they aren’t connected to an intention to change a behavior. What kid, or adult for that matter, doesn’t want to talk with her friend when she is bursting with ideas to share? And there is no point in making snowballs if you don’t throw them at a target. Human targets only increase the challenge and the fun.

It is highly likely the punished writers in the above examples had no intention to change their behavior or their attitude about breaking the rule. In fact, they may have even used the chalkboard time to plot their next rule violation — this time with more stealth.

Admittedly this type of punishment is handed out less frequently in current school settings. And yes, we can agree that rules exist to create positive and safe environments for the collective group, but in most cases, when a rule is broken, the focus is on the heart of the rule and not on the heart of the offender.

In order to correct or change a behavior we need to focus on the heart of the rule-breaker.

Fast forward to today. What if you, the adult, are now, or are still, the rule-breaker? The situations and rules may be different, but now there is no rule enforcer, and no chalkboard for you to stand before.

Except there is.

Who is the enforcer? You are.

What are the rules now? You should know, you set most of them. Simply put, the day-to-day rules (our guiding principles) are how we go about getting what we want and don’t want in life. These rules are very individualized, and yet across humanity they have strong similarities.

Our wants: physical and spiritual health, meaningful relationships, financial stability, and career capital.

Our rules: eat healthy foods and pursue personal or spiritual development. Love one another — family, friends, neighbors, strangers, enemies. Save for rainy days and retirement, spend less than we make. Set goals and build a resume showing productivity and success working on something we consider significant.

How are you doing with these high-level, generalized rules? Have you broken any? Found yourself sidetracked on a few? Have you even heard from “the enforcer” lately?

My guess is if we dove deeper into the specifics, we would quickly be forced to admit we break more rules than we keep.

We.

You and I.

We are not alone in our delinquent behavior. We are a tribe with long lists of failed behaviors.

There certainly is no shortage of daily reminders of these failures from the wannabe-enforcers — those who have stepped in because the official enforcer is too tired, too overwhelmed, too busy, too lost, too ______________(you fill in the blank). The media makes sure we know we are failing and the self-help industry is experiencing exploding growth. Regularly, our spiritual leaders (mostly) lovingly point out our missteps while trying to give us guidance toward more divine paths. Those closest to us have no trouble letting us know when we’ve let them down. And as some of us stand in front of the mirror every morning or while we toss and turn at night, we remind ourselves of our list of failures, but feel paralyzed at how to deal with our ‘Fs’ in life.

Exchanging an ‘F’ for an ‘F’

But what if we reframed those Failures as simply Feedback? Is it wordsmithing? Are we playing semantic games? Maybe, but who cares if it drops your stress level and releases you from the negative power punch the word “failure” delivers to your gut each time it’s encountered.

Even if you never received an ‘F’ in school, you saw the looks on the kid’s face that did. You saw his body posture crumple and the fight to resist the tears. You saw her quickly fold the paper to hide the evidence and her head drop to hide the shame. Or maybe you dropped your own head knowing you’d cheated to get that ‘A.’ Most of us at some point got a grade less than we expected and even though it was respectable, somehow it still seemed like a failure. No matter where you landed on the academic spectrum, the grading system taught you early on that you didn’t want to fail in school or in life. And yet, no one is exempt.

We all fail. When we do, it stings, it cuts, and it scars. It takes away our breath, our joy, and our peace. In its harshest form, it shreds our hearts and our dreams.

Failure.

How can one word be so powerful? Is it really that powerful, or are we empowering it?

As Thomas Edison said,

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

It’s time to empower the word failure with a positive punch: a fist thrust into the air or a fist-bump with a friend. “We failed!” is the accompanying cheer. Okay, maybe we’re not quite ready for that level of enthusiastic response, but we can move in a positive direction by universally (you, me, our families, friends, coworkers, etc.) using the following phrase:

There is no such thing as failure, only feedback.

We exchange an ‘F’ for an ‘F’ and positive replaces negative. Our failures are there to teach us something. Some lessons are more painful than others and some lessons require multiple failures before we finally learn them.

We all want to succeed, but the reality is the most successful people have failed — many times. If someone tells you they’ve never failed, most likely they are lying to save face. They are so knotted up with denial or fear of failure that they are compelled to either self-medicate to survive, or are one minor life disruption away from physical, emotional, or spiritual implosion. Or worse yet, they know they’ve played it safe in order not to fail. They’ve never put it all on the line.

Skiers often say, “If you’re not falling, you’re not learning.”

So if we can agree failure is only feedback, what do we do next?

We need to change our behaviors. And change begins by recognizing that the negative power of failure is its own feedback.

Simple feedback. Challenging implementation.

As adults we often desire to change a behavior (or two) because we’ve broken a rule (or four): eat less, exercise more, work less, play more, spend less money, spend more time with important relationships, waste less time, sleep more. The unwritten “rules” we break hurt us and our relationships. This is not news and yet we consistently break our own rules. Welcome to humanity.

We are all consistently inconsistent. High-five your spouse, your child, your neighbor, your competition, your enemy; you have something in common with all of them.

And there is something else you will eventually have in common with them if you don’t change your unwanted behaviors: regret.

The number one regret noted by the dying is wishing they had spent more time with the people they love.

The response to failure seems to be connected to finding more time, but we all know time is the ultimate equalizer: 24 hours every day, assuming it’s not our last day.

This leads us to believe the response to failure must involve goal setting and time management. The list of articles or books on these two topics rivals the populations of some mid-sized countries. I encourage you to read several books if you’d really like to get a robust set of ideas to try. If that seems overwhelming, you’ll be back in front of the mirror feeling like a failure for not reading even one book.

Step away from the mirror. Pick up the chalk.

Rather than punishing yourself for your missteps and detours by writing statements on your personal chalkboard like, “I will never eat another brownie,” or “I am a horrible father and will not work past five o’clock again,” what if you focused on your heart’s true desires and paired them with an upside down and backwards version of chalkboard punishments that could actually work?

It’s a concept I call Writing Wages.

Writing Wages is a way to pay yourself by writing down your heart’s true desires.

In her book, “Write it Down and Make it Happen,” Harriette Anne Klauser includes numerous success stories from people of all ages and backgrounds who wrote down their dreams, behavior changes, and desires only to find them coming true. One at a time their dream sentences became reality, sometimes slowly, and other times as fast as a bolt of lightning. Long forgotten dreams written down only once suddenly presented themselves as if they were simply waiting to be noticed. Some desires were fulfilled as if they were a carbon copy of the handwritten words, while others were unveiled through an unexpected script — a surprising outcome even better than the initial desire.

Harriette Klauser references Lou Holtz, one of the most successful college football coaches of all time. He never inherited a winning team and yet took six different teams to a bowl game and won five of them. What most people don’t know is how in 1966 at the age of 28 he was broke, unemployed, and his wife was expecting their first child. He read the book, The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz which was given to him for inspiration by his wife. The book motivated him to write down his goals. He wrote statements about being the head coach at Notre Dame, winning a national championship, making a hole-in-one, jumping out of a plane, and meeting the pope and the president. At last count, Lou Holtz had achieved 102 of his original 107 goals. That’s a pretty good success rate considering these were big dreams and ambitious goals.

I like those odds. Do you?

If so, grab a piece of paper and a pen. Don’t type this into your phone or computer. Engage your motor skills and your brain. For twenty minutes, write down your dreams and goals. Think BIG. Spare no expense. What could it hurt?

Be specific with what you want to achieve and by when. Visualize the details of each achievement. Keep writing.

If you have children, invite them to join you. Read them the books by Justin Matott: When I was a Boy…I Dreamed or When I was a Girl…I Dreamed. They (the children and the books) most likely will inspire you to go bigger. Hold nothing back.

Don’t stop at 10 dreams because it seems like enough and it’s a round number. There is no dream lottery where if you pick the right number you win them all. Write until your hand cramps and then write some more. Write until your brain is empty of dreams.

There is no upper limit on achieving dreams in one lifetime; there is always another one to discover.

Add to the list tomorrow.

Write a dream down on a napkin at lunch next Friday if a napkin is all you have available. If it gets misplaced with the receipt from lunch or is accidently thrown out when you tidy your wallet, the universe doesn’t care. Do you know how many great ideas/dreams were sketched out on a napkin only to be realized months and years later? Sure, those dreams may have still been fulfilled, but how many great ideas have you had over the years, only to lose track of them because you never wrote them down?

Writing down your dreams brings focus and attention to snippets of life that will take you closer to them. It’s similar to when you buy a car and suddenly it seems like half the cars on the road are the same model as yours. There’s a scientific name for this, but rather than research that name, use the time to write down another dream. Allow your mind to use your Writing Wages as the seed investments for your dreams. As your conscious and subconscious awareness grows, you will develop connections and make decisions which will create opportunities to fulfill your dreams.

Take Action

Pick up a pen and write down your dreams.

Then go out and live life. Live Big. Dream Bigger. Take fearless action toward your dreams and take notice when the Writing Wages start paying you, with interest.