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Stopped Down Studio
STOPPED DOWN STUDIO
Bay Area Headshot Photographer
Failure is the best sauce

Reflection

Failure is the best sauce

You have to live with being wrong.

In my life, there’s a Before and After realizing what being wrong could do for me.

It was a journey. Failure wasn’t just embarrassing, it was like a spark on a gasoline fuse. If I screw this up, I’ll never work again. (I may have had some imposter syndrome in there, too. 😉) You know the drill. But being wrong unlocks so much: innovation, collaboration (no one wants to work with someone who can’t be wrong), even refinement. In writers’ circles the phrase “kill your darlings” comes up a lot. Learning to be wrong teaches you to see your goal clearly: the work, not your ego.

I’m grateful I went through it.

Because now I’ve driven full-tilt into enough walls to know, definitively, that failing is the default.

My process is built on the assumption that we will be wrong most of the time. It’s a feature, not a bug. Taking the pressure off “right” allows it to emerge organically, You don’t plant flowers in flower pedals; you plant them in compost. The goal is success, and the method is failure."