Discovery versus Assumption

How much potential do we discount by assuming the worst outcomes of any given situation?

"Living in discovery is at all times preferable to living through assumptions."

Now go back and read it again. And again.

When we entertain the future of our:

• Creative works

• Marketing

• Ideas

• Plans

• Curiosities

• Risks

We often assume a negative outcome. One where whatever we've done was too brave, too different, and too risky.

But it is these open-hearted, game-changing ideas we care about. Not the reproductions of what has been before it.

Assuming if I take a risk, I will fail

I cannot tell you how many conversations I've had with creatives and freelancers that centre on the idea that if they pursue the idea they want to pursue over the idea they "should do", they assume failure. And that the time spent will be wasted.

But even if we fail, so what?

Isn't a process of eliminating ideas valuable?

What time is wasted when you get to try something in the flesh and learn from it? It's certainly better than carrying the weight of stuff we long to try but never quite find the courage to attempt.

Besides, isn't it more of a waste of your time to do something you don't really care for?

Isn’t honing our predictive skills valuable?

How can we get better at predicting where the best use of our energy lies when we're continually assuming we'll fail? Or that we'll try something and it won't fail as such, it just won't bear fruit? How can we possibly know this until we actually try?

And even if we do, so what? Failure isn't finite.

Getting experienced and comfortable with it seems like a much better defense than saving up all the opportunities under a blanket of unrealised potential to protect them from it.

Opting for discovery is always a win

Call it crossing off a potential win, answering a hypothesis, or even putting an idea to bed to make room for the next one. Opting for a discovery is always a win.

And a mighty one at that when compared to assumption.

How can the experience of creation and trying something new be a zero sum gain when you can:

• practice and refine skills

• learn about an idea and yourself

• see something succeed

• test a hypothesis

• buoy your courage

• help you uncover the next thing

• get enthused by the act of creation?
  

  

  
  Image: "Living in discovery is at all times preferable to living through assumptions." from Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being.
  
  What can you discover today?

  
  What assumptions can you challenge by substituting discovery in its place?