What if I fail? vs. What happens when I fail?
Those two questions are not the same. One is rhetorical, and you know the rule around here.
Don’t ask yourself rhetorical questions.
“What if I fail?” is a rhetorical question, which means it’s primarily meant to be used to engage rhetoric… which is DIALOGIC. Rhetoric is made to catalyze you to do something, but too often, when rhetorical questions are internal, there’s no dialogue to promote catalyzing, so we just keep asking more and more rhetorical questions.
We have to answer the rhetorical questions.
And I know some of us with Intellection or Strategic or Context or Analytical (especially if those Strengths also have trauma triggers associated with them–no, Strengths are not trauma responses, but trauma can catalyze Strengths responses) love nothing more than a good rhetorical question because it feels like it’s going to be helpful.
The process of asking a rhetorical question FEELS good. But it rarely causes actual rhetoric (persuasion) or dialogue (catalyzing).
We often believe that we have to answer the rhetorical questions with more logic, more thinking, or more plans, but let me promise you, my lovely friends, the only thing that really answers rhetorical questions is ACTION.
I know. I know. I can see some of you recoiling and hissing like a vampire accidentally touched by the sun…
But “what happens when I fail” is about the results of your action. It’s “what do I do with this data” and not “what will I do if this theoretically happens?” Having theoretical plans is not bad. But too many of us get caught in the thought spirals, and we do not give ourselves the chance to see what will actually happen when we do the thing.
This is why I’ve been pushing the gamification of our writing careers for so many years. Lowering the stakes (considering it R&D, rather than performance) causes us to be more comfortable with letting things not work out sometimes. Rhetorical questions are keeping some of us from having the things we want, and we don’t even know it.
Those of us who are high Intellection, just think about this for awhile. Think about the action clock of Intellection, and how there’s an action point at midnight, and then the gravity of thinking takes over. One of the most important development points for Intellection is to become more comfortable with taking action when your Intellection presents you with midnight.
We need to see what will happen when we fail. Not IF. WHEN. We should be failing. (And yes, if you’re getting into trauma response territory here, you can ignore me.) We need the data. “The master has failed more than the amateur has even tried” is a maxim for a reason.
This is also why we talk about resilience and sustainability a lot around here. When rhetorical questions are running our days, we’re missing out on the valuable opportunity of learning from the actions we take.
You know I love all of you, and you know I say this in love, but…
Please stop asking yourselves rhetorical questions.
Do the development work on your Intellection of taking action when you feel action is there, but the certainty hasn’t reached 100% on the scale yet. Practice that.
I’m going to go take action on something I’ve been intellecting for awhile, so you can do it with me. Open the manuscript.
– Becca