After trying countless alternatives multiple times and different points in your life its easy to come to the conclusion of “I tried something like that before and it didn’t work – therefore I shouldn’t try this new thing.”

It sounds very rational and it feels right but it doesn’t capture the full picture.

It assumes a couple of things:

• That life is about perfection or in other words “doing the right thing”, that since it didn’t work that time it then assumes that it was the “wrong” thing to do
• This thinking is what David Deutsch would call “Bad Philosophy”, philosophy that is not only a bad explanation but prevents the growth of new knowledge and possibility.
• It fails to understand a deeper root of the problem – maybe all these things weren’t working not because the “thing was wrong” but maybe the way we approached it needed to change. Our explanation of definition of the problem was what actually needed to be approved (hence this post).

We all are quick to rush to tell ourselves a story of how we have done something before and that this for sure wont work this time, forgetting that growing is not limited by how many times we have tried something but is rather a cause for growth.