I’m a human test subject. No really, ever since I can remember I would tinker around with “I wonder what would happen if….”.
In the last 15 years, I’ve tried a TON of different nutrition eating plans, all sorts of various ways to exercise and move my body, a variety of mindset strategies, energy practices and spiritual rituals. I have tested out calendaring systems, time management strategies and project planning tools. I’ve worked with different business mentors, marketing professionals and all sorts of methods of business building.
Some of those tests came from a place of self-loathing: “I don’t like me so I’m going to try to find a way to FIX me”. Those tests were all fundamentally flawed and the results skewed.
As I grew to realize that the foundation of true testing was SELF NEUTRALITY, the effectiveness of testing improved.
Fast forward to today, I STILL experiment with myself and my business---and that’s one of things I love MOST about being a success coach. I GET to experiment with myself in all sorts of ways and then share those results with my clients. Then, I help them identify, set up and run their OWN experiments so that they TOO can distill down what’s their own secret sauce for success.
It’s just the funnest.
Here are a few things I’ve learned about TESTING.
1. I don’t have to believe it will work/not work before I begin. That’s the whole point of a test.
2. The less attached I am to a particular outcome, the more new possibilities I’m apt to uncover.
3. Accidents can be the path to innovation.
4. If I start an experiment and then keep changing all the variables, the test is going to take forever, be super confusing and yield unhelpful data.
5. There’s no room for self-loathing in the data. It’s simply neutral information to use so that I can develop my own effective systems.
6. Testing keeps life FUN! I’m not a scientist by trade---but I’m a life long learner and explorer. I love that there is NO glass ceiling or limit to our own creativity and ability to think (and TEST) outside the box.
Call to Truth:
What would you like to develop in your OWN life?
How might you turn that into an experiment?