"Amputate Your Sense Of Shame"

This is just a part of a quote by Roy H Williams.  The entire quote is:  "Fear is the assassin of success.  Why not bulletproof in 2 easy steps? 1)Make peace with the possibility of failure.
2) Amputate your sense of shame."

There is enough "meat" in those two sentences for a number of blogs.  Tonight I will start with the second step.  "Amputate your sense of shame".

I am thinking now of a blog I did a little while ago, where I gave the example of fear being taught.  If that is almost always true, then in my opinion "shame"  is always taught.  No one is born with a sense of shame.  Someone always has to teach you shame.  In over 70 years of living I have never seen a newborn baby, puppy, kitten, etc etc exhibit shame.

There is enough blame to go around when it comes to the people and societies who advertently or inadvertantly teach shame.  I think schools and churchs are outstanding examples of how to impose shame on innocent children.  How many of us hasn't stood at the front of the class with our faces red and our heads bowed as we gave a wrong answer or totally forgot what  we had memorized and prepared to regurgitate in front of a teacher and class.  And what about presenting at a work related function?  That is really fun as we stumble for the words.  I have reread my own blogs after spell checking (or not) and realize that I have typed the same word twice.  I always feel the warmth in face when that happens; because I know that you will know that I made a mistake.  Even understanding why I make this mistake (because my brain works a lot faster than my fingers.  Thank God or I would be here all day.)

The only tool I have found that works for me is at the very beginning of a presentation is to say something like there is very good chance I may mess, funk this up, depending on my audience, because I am not perfect and I have a whole other life when I am not here; however, I will do my best to present the content as clearly as possible and take questions later.  I never claim to be an expert on anything except myself, my feelings and my experiences...........That helps sometimes........

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013.........9p.m.