Everything we do is a learning experience – every interaction, choice, mistake, and successful trial. Once you stop making choices, taking risks, trying new things…you stop growing. Today, I’m talking about how becoming a lifelong student and teacher can propel your life in the direction you want…at incredible speeds! Tune in for my tips on overcoming fear of failure so that you can lean into the learning experiences life is offering you. Accelerated growth ahead!

See transcript below:

Steve Napolitan: Welcome to More Business More Life Daily. Today I want to talk about growth and how that focus on growth can propel our life in the way that we want.

So growth is our next core value for our company and we think life is learning, period. Everything that we do is a learning experience. Every interaction is a learning. Me being a parent, my three children, as a parent, you think of yourself as, “Hey, I’m the one that’s teaching my children,” but guess what? I feel I’ve actually learned more being a parent than I teach my children.

Now, that may or may not be true, but it’s a feeling that I have. I’ve learned so much. Having a company, I learned so much. Having clients, there again, I’m a consultant, a coach, a trainer. When I’m training, I learn as well. I learn as well.

Sometimes, I leave meetings and I’m like, “Wow. I learned a lot from that, too.” Even when you look at, when you are a teacher, when you look at martial arts, a part of a lot of martial arts, I don’t know if it’s all of them, I’ve not studied all of them in any depth really that much at all. But one thing that I have recognized is that, as you go up the different belts in many different martial arts, the ones that I have been around, the upper belts train the younger belts. And there’s something amazing about that.

There’s a saying that if you want to learn something, read about it. If you want to get good at it, you do it. And then if you want to master it, you teach it. And that level of mastery comes from being a teacher. Because to teach something, you have to break it down into smaller steps and have the wisdom to pass it onto someone else. And in doing that, you lift your level of awareness and all of this is growing. All of it is growing.

Even I always put a thing, imagine a mountain and let’s say you’re halfway up to the summit. Then, can you look to the top of the summit and maybe people know how to get around the rivers. Maybe there’s some creeks going by. Maybe there’s some big rocks. Maybe there’s ridges where it’s hard to climb. Maybe there’s thistle bushes or different things that get through. If somebody has gone that way ahead of you, they’ve gone to the top and they’re ahead of you, can you learn from them? Can you get to the top of the mountain quicker if you were able to find the best path?

Absolutely, right? There’s ways that we can learn from someone else. What about the people that are further down the mountain that have not gotten as far as you have? Can we teach them how to get where we’re going? And the answer is yes. So everyone, in my opinion, is a student and a teacher.

For the rest of my life, I will continue to be a student as well as be a teacher wherever I can to help more people. The reality is that we are going to learn the rest of our life. I even used to say, “I’m going to learn until the day I die.” And now I don’t even think that statement is true because when I die, I’ll probably learn even more. It’s going to open myself up to all of the universe in a way, whatever you believe.

But I believe that it’ll be a massive expansion at that point because then you’re not locked into this vessel, this body as a spirit. I look at the way that … Many people have said this before, but many people think that humans are looking to be spiritual. And I know I’m getting on a tangent for a second, but I believe that we are spiritual beings, having a human experience. And that is the case, right?

So then as we leave this body, then we’re having more spiritual essence and all of this, why is this coming up right now is all part of our growth, grow, grow, grow. It’s what we do. A tree is a seed at one point. And as that seed turns into the plant that it becomes, and then the tree, it grows and grows until it falls over and then it goes back to the earth and becomes the nutrients that helps grow the next set of trees.

In fact, they say now they have knowledge that when a tree dies, all of the energy that’s left in it goes out to the trees surrounding it, which typically are its children in a way. So all of this you might think how do we get on this whole tangent on this? But it’s all growth.

And as you embrace that and you embrace that everything is learning, then there are no failures. The last part is there’s no failing, there’s only feedback. So you do anything. And this again comes from Carl [Bouquet 00:04:50] that I heard this direct. There’s no failure, there’s only feedback. So everything we get is feedback. Then we learn from that and we’re making new choices. So the only failure would be if you stop. So as long as you want to keep growing, which I think most of us do, then you get the feedback from whatever activity you do and you decide, was that good or bad?

Oh, it wasn’t good. Let’s not do that again. It was good. Let’s do it again. If it feels good, it is good. Let’s do it more. If it doesn’t feel good, let’s do it less. So get that feedback. Make new choices. Just remember, life is growing.

If you got value from this, please let us know. Let me know what was most valuable. If you need help in other areas, please let me know in the comments. We’ll look at putting these into these skills, into these three to five minute videos and subscribe. If you like to know what we’re doing, hit the bell so that it comes to you when we release these videos. Until next time, remember, choose gratitude and create freedom.