A drowned rodent and second chances
Published: Sat, 04/04/15
I emptied out a waterbutt yesterday so that I could rearrange the water collection system on our shed. At the bottom was a dead mouse which had obviously fallen in, failed to get out and drowned. A sad mistake for the poor little rodent and not an error he got the chance to learn from.
Some mistakes are irreversible and are best avoided. Most mistakes are not (thankfully) fatal and we get the chance to learn from them. In fact any real progress comes through research and development which is a business way of saying ‘trial and error’. The important things is to try, fail, learn from the failure and fail better next time. It is not a good idea to keep making the same mistakes over and over again but worse still is to so desperately need to succeed that failure cannot be risked or be so afraid of failing that you do not try at all, which comes down to the same thing.
Marketing something, such as a Stav course or class depends upon making a lot of mistakes. It is tempting to hang on until the perfect, absolutely guaranteed advertising message has been created. However such a message can never be created so effectively nothing happens. Either a lot of resources are wasted on putting all the eggs in one basket, or the advert never goes out at all. The only way is to test one crazy idea after another and measure the responses until something seems to be working.
It is the same with actual training. It is not all that difficult to teach Stav, the system is relatively simple. But learning Stav is a process of testing out what you have learned in the safety of a training environment.
Even this email is a mistake, some people will not open it, some may not like what I have written but the only real mistake would be to not send it at all. At least I get another chance tomorrow or next week, not like that poor mouse!
You get a chance to make some mistakes learning Stav, I have just updated the calendar at http://www.iceandfire.org/calendar.html and the next seminar in Crewkerne is on the 25th which will be self-defence in the morning and an axe seminar in the afternoon. http://www.somersetstav.co.uk/sd.html
regards
Graham