Find Your Edges

Then find the path through

What failure can teach you

There is a way forward from where you are today. A way to a you that is more capable emotionally, physically, and mentally. This isn’t a judgment upon you. It’s simply a fact that every one of us has more to us than we know.

This works no matter from where you are starting. You need very little to begin, just some curiosity about who you really are and what you might be capable of.

The way to this you is something you can experience. You will feel it and know it. You won’t have to wonder if this is a cheap parlor trick. You won’t have to take it on faith.

Let me give you an example. One day, you’re out in the fresh air playing with your son and you’re trying to teach him a skill - riding a bike - something you had trouble learning when you were boy. It seems to be going well, but then something happens. Maybe he slips or just gets spooked, as children do. Suddenly he closes up. He can’t learn, no matter what you say or how you demonstrate it. He is closed and that is that.

In this situation, it’s natural for the parent to feel frustration. “What if he never learns? What if I can’t teach him? What does that say about me as a father? What is wrong with him?” These thoughts might go through your head. You might even panic a little bit. If you have done this, you know what happens next. Your son gets even more closed, leaves the bike riding experience unhappy, and now you have a new problem. He doesn’t want to ride again. This is all too common. Parenting is hard. We’ve all been there.

But something else happened that you may not have noticed, and if you study it closely, you will unlock something truly life changing.

You have tells

Teddy KGB wouldn’t eat his Oreo cookies when he held a bad poker hand. Like Hollywood card villains with amusing accents, you have some pretty obvious “tells” as well. The problem is you are not looking.

Let’s go back to that example with your son’s bicycle, so you can see what I mean. If you can step back and examine how your body physically reacted in the moment just before you verbalized frustration, you would see a few things happening. Your breath gets shallow. You body gets warm. Your muscles may pulse just a touch. Your chest gets tight. You exhibit physical characteristics of fear that are similar to what happens to every human when faced with a physically dangerous situation. The magnitude of the reaction is smaller, but the physical symptoms are amazingly similar.

The physical symptoms are your “tells”. If you learn to recognize them as they occur, you can learn to deal with them in a way that makes you grow in ways you never thought possible.

The really exciting thing about fear tells is that they exist for all different kinds of fear we face. So it’s not just a reaction to physical danger. Have something difficult you want to talk to your wife about? Think about the conversation and then watch your body react. Feel guilty over how you treated a classmate or a friend? Think about trying to apologize and make it right, and watch your body react. Unsure if you can make your fitness goal this week? Worried about a work deadline? Concerned about medical treatment for a family member?

All of these things that cause fear, will also cause a physical reaction in you.

If you don’t believe you have fear tells or don’t know what they are, the easiest way to practice recognizing and overcoming them is to try a cold shower. Right before you step in and turn that faucet on, notice how your body reacts. Then do it again the next day, and the next. Your fear tells never go away. You will always react, even if you take a cold shower 1000 days in a row. You just learn to recognize it and grow.

Your edges are a guide

Another way to look at fear tells is to picture them as edges, semi-solid walls that you can push through. If you can train yourself to do that, you will make a major leap in your life. You will experience something real, something that does not require a leap of faith.

In the Marines, they teach that the proper way to handle an ambush is to turn toward the enemy, return fire and advance. That seems crazy, but I trust they know what they are doing. Think of your fear tell as an ambush and do the exact same thing. If you feel that fear coming on, telling you to run, you must learn to take the same strategy. Turn towards that shower, walk right in and turn that water on as cold as it gets. Attack the ambush.

Again, cold showers are great practice for this, but it doesn’t have to be something physical. Maybe you want to be a better father, but you find yourself constantly panicking when your children aren’t listening to you. Since this will happen often, it’s great for practicing these ambushes. Ask your kids to help you, then watch your body as they look at you like you’re an alien and nonchalantly walk away.

As you push through your edges, the world available to you seems to grow as well. The ability to handle situations, like struggling to teach skills to your child, may seem minor and inconsequential, but it’s not. It might be the thing that your child remembers most about his time with you. And when you start to sum up all of those situations where fear would have controlled you, but no longer does, you become a giant of a person compared to who you were before.

Find your edges and push through them. You will thank yourself for it.

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