The art of stumbling better
Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other. - Walter Elliot
I Am Enough.
These seemingly simple words have profoundly enriched the lives of many, paving the way to confidence, courage, and happiness for all who embrace them.
Stumbling is a valuable byproduct of being alive.
You can view stumbling as a weakness—letting a misstep derail your confidence, break your flow, and slow your progress.
Or, you can see stumbling as part of a longer journey—using the misstep to gain knowledge, sharpen your edge, and prepare for the next challenge. Unfortunately, stumbling is not a skill taught in school. High achievers often struggle with it in early adulthood because they've rarely faced failure. All their experience tells them success is a given.
After a decade of working on a feature film, I became a master in the art of stumbling. I faced financing struggles, ultimately relying on family and friends. I even received paper bags full of cash from a bookie backing the project. I had to persuade a crew of forty people to work for three weeks without pay and find ways to feed them.
For years, it felt like one crushing blow after another. Every setback drained my confidence, sapped my energy, and made me doubt my success. At the end, just before its release on Cable, I was the only one left, working alone to complete it.
But each stumble taught me something valuable and brought me closer to my dream. I realized I had to change; the world wouldn’t change for me. I needed to learn how to use stumbling instead of being used by it. This created a resolve that set me on my feet again and again.
I know I’m not alone. We’ve all felt this pain in some area of our lives. It could be anything:
Passed up for a promotion you felt you earned
A weak presentation in front of someone important
Harsh feedback from a colleague, partner, or friend
Fill in your own painful stumble here ___________.
Here’s a system to help you stumble more effectively:
The Stumbling System: 4 Steps to Move Forward and Stumble Like a Pro
Set a Stumble Timer - allow time to be your firned.
Viktor Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” Our power lies in creating space between stimulus and response. After a stumble, force or allow a pause, take a walk, gather your breath. Create some breathing space.
We often inflate the size of the stumble in our minds. Most stumbles are micro details, not macro issues. Give yourself a fixed time to feel frustrated or angry about the setback (~24 hours or less, depending on your preference). Over time, you can reduce this period with practice.
During this time, just sit with your feelings and emotions. Observe life without any input from you, like watching your heartbeat. Allow yourself grace during this period, but when time’s up, move to the next step. I set a timer on my phone with a special ring—a piece of music that triggers the next step.
Become Albert Einstein After your grace period, it’s time to discover “the antidote.” View the stumble through the lens of an unbiased, unemotional third party. Approach it like a scientist:
Gather Information: What happened? How did it differ from your expectations?
Analyze Information: Why might this have happened? What elements of your process contributed to this outcome? What underlying insights can you glean?
Neutral, disciplined analysis establishes accountability and sparks your next action. Determine the variables within your control, understand them in detail, and focus on improving them for the next attempt. To a scientist, every stumble unlocks another part of the mystery.
Time Travel Becoming a scientist requires zooming in—now, zoom out. Imagine yourself a year from now, in flow, celebrating something wonderful. Looking back, point to the stumble you just experienced as the turning point, the critical moment that set the conditions for this celebration.
Ask your future self a few questions:
What actions did you take to make it so?
What changes did you make after the stumble?
What behaviors, mindsets, and routines did you adopt?
What belief systems or frameworks did you use to create a better relationship with your stumble?
Use these questions to guide your present actions.
Building Again The hardest part of recovering from a stumble is putting yourself back out there. It’s easy to stand on the sidelines, but hard to stay in the arena.
As Teddy Roosevelt said, “It is not the critic who counts... The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming...”
Insight requires sensing and responding to life. This creates new feedback loops, and at the end of every loop is intention and action, even if sometimes the action is to wait patiently. Remember, action doesn’t have to be perfect to be worthwhile.
Your Starting Line
Life expands the moment you stop fearing stumbles and start embracing them as friends. The world isn’t run by perfect people who never stumbled. It’s run by imperfect people who stumbled over and over again but used every stumble to set the conditions for future well-being. Maybe that stumble isn’t a setback but a new starting line.