A key to being bolder, more fearless: accounting for failure.

We seek to be at a better place in life, we want to get that promotion, we want to get out of bed with energy and motivation. Why? We can answer that question a million different ways but I think a pretty decent general answer is: to live our life more.

We have so much potential and possibility in our lives. We could book a ticket to somewhere today. We could email someone famous and ask them to spread your message. We could strike up a conversation with so many new people today but we in general, for good reason too, keep the daily routine of our lives behind the safeguards we placed with our minds.

It's quite literally a safeguard. We like to be loss-averse, we don't like failure. So while we acknowledge that we have the potential and possibility with lots of unrealized gains, we don't take advantage of it because of the unrealized loss.

Here's a simple fact of life: with whatever we do, there is always a nonzero chance that things won't go the way we predict/want it to. Why? Two reasons:

We can only control the things we have control over, namely ourselves
We cannot know what we don't know

When I take a driver's license test, I can't guarantee that the car I'm driving will work without malfunctioning and I can't predict if someone will run into my car even when I'm driving safely. The chance of something not going our way is always nonzero, but certain things are more certain than others.

With this, we have to change our paradigm: instead of thinking about avoiding failure, we have to take into account for failure in our life.

Fortunately you know what this is like, because insurance is basically accounting for failure in everyday situations. Why get insurance when you rent a car? Why get traveler's insurance when you travel? Because you never know. It gives you a feeling of safety when you account for unpredictable events.

Realistically this means coming up with plan B's and C's for everything you do. But what if your mind goes rampant and you can't tell if you've covered enough bases or not? I have a good starting guideline for you.

Make ONE alternative plan, and ACCEPT what may come after.

The one alternative plan part makes sense. The accepting part, what does that mean? Let me give you a bit of a context by sharing some paragraphs from an excellent book name Crave: The Hidden Biology of Addiction and Cancer by Dr. Raphael Cuomo of UCSD.

The most central player in this process is a neurotransmitter nearly everyone has heard of: dopamine. It is often described in popular media as the chemical of pleasure. But this is an oversimplification. Dopamine is less about pleasure itself and more about the pursuit of it. It is the molecule that drives motivation, effort, and expectation. The moment you see a dessert tray, hear the pop of a soda can, or get a buzz from your phone, dopamine is already at work. It is not waiting for the reward. It is creating the drive to get it.

Anticipation carries both physiological weight and energetic cost. Dopamine release begins in the brain's mesolimbic pathway, a circuit that includes the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens. These brain regions are responsible for processing reward, reinforcing behavior, and connecting emotion with memory. In early human history, this system served a critical function. It motivated people to search for food, seek shelter, build relationships, and survive. But in the modern world, the same circuitry is inundated with artificially engineered stimuli that far exceed anything found in nature.

...

Cortisol and dopamine function together to reinforce the behaviors that follow craving. Dopamine initiates the pursuit, creating a sense of anticipation and focus. Cortisol amplifies the urgency, mobilizing energy and attention toward the object of desire. Together, they form a powerful internal signal that the reward is both important and immediate. Over time, the brain learns not only to respond to the reward, but to the circumstances surrounding it.

I'm talking about dopamine all of a sudden because with the current technology and media we learned how to have a skewed, unnatural working model of how we interact with dopamine and cortisol. We mistakenly have reinforced this idea that FEELING GOOD IS GOOD. But think of how much time you're spending feeling good on your phone, with your food, with your caffeine -- can you genuinely say you are doing well?

Coming back to the main point of this writing, when we set our intentions on something and get to action we may get our desired outcome. Good! But we might not. So we make one alternative. What happens when our alternative doesn't work? When the alternative of the alternative doesn't work? This worrying about endless alternatives assumes one thing: you don't have what it takes to deal with an unplanned situation.

Here is how I'm proposing a challenge to that notion. You have a very, very powerful brain that is capable of overcoming challenges. It has the ability to observe surroundings and find tools and resources by combination, pattern recognition, creativity, and so much more. By using your brain to its fullest and overcoming a situation, you're deriving dopamine how you're originally supposed to derive dopamine!

Operating with this mindset will give you the ability to live your life more, development of your inner abilities, AND a deeper trust relationship with yourself. To me, that sounds like a big win. With that, register for that gym you've been seeing in your commute. Call that number to cancel a service you don't use. Get out of bed even if you're feeling groggy to do something you want to do. The possibilities are endless!

Billy Seol

July Life Coach
julylifecoach.com