Learning from my mistakes

Interesting synchronicity that my friend Fred Wilson, brilliant investor, speaker and writer, shared about entrepreneurs and investors learning from mistakes.

I’m learning these days the most challenging skills I have learned. I have always learned from my mistakes in my business life. Always trying what seems difficult and not afraid of failure. I failed a lot.

Today I am learning humility and discipline.

The consequences of failure in the indigenous teachings path I am on are very deep. If am too sure of myself and try things above my capacities my body simply shuts down and requires outside help when my force and energy levels become too low.

I wrote about the power of songs. Each song has a meaning and a purpose. It can be a prayer or a healing in itself. I can call specific energies needed for some work. There are songs I simply cannot sing yet, or cannot sing outside of a specific context.

Biraci Jr. told me recently :

“How do I become a master?” - the student asks (it wasn’t me!!)
”You make every mistake I did” - the master answers

That’s basically what I have been going through the last three years learning skills that most of the time seem impossible to learn and pushing constantly my own limits.

Humility is the key word. A key word that we don’t learn so much in business.

Discipline is the other one.

I never had much of it as entrepreneurship is often about “breaking things” or “going against the rules” like Uber broke laws in most countries when it started to have non professional taxi drives take people around cities. I remember the founder Travis Kalanick telling me he had a wall in his office with all the law suits he was going simultaneously through around the world.

So I did the same as what I learned in the past. If I am told to not try this yet because I am not ready for it, I will try anyway. There are 3,000 plants in the garden of the Yawanawa people of the Amazon. Some can give you incredible force and healings and some can take you down if you aren’t ready for them. We do not know much about them. The indigenous do.

I have always tried to help others with my conference LeWeb, trying to inspire entrepreneurs to start their own thing.

What I am learning here with the indigenous is happiness, connection to nature and going through life in a very different way. I have a strong constant call to help others.

For now I just try to share my learnings here. Helping others the way the indigenous can do takes incredible work and discipline and is very difficult and takes years.

My spiritual leader and friend Peù did something to me a few months ago that involves singing words in ancient Yawanawà. Of course I tried to learn it without asking him and started singing it to him seeking feedback. I “iterated” as I did in my startup life.

He looked at me very concerned and said “it took me 10 years to be ready and learn to do this. Keep learning the basic songs for now, you are not ready. Do not even try.”

The difference between these skills and the business skills is when you are told not to try, you should +really+ not try. I did. It hits you back so hard and puts you back in your place showing you potential consequences way more important than failing a startup. Peù told me if I kept going I could damage myself in a way he could not help with.

So for now, I am focusing on being a good student, I sit at my place and nowhere else. I do what I am told to exactly and I do not try things outside of what I have been told I can try. I learned hard from my mistakes.

It’s very difficult at my age and what I have done before “in the matrix” but it is the best training I can go through in my life. Some people call it ego death.