Life: The Grand Experiment

Photo byGerd Altmann from Pixabay

Imagine viewing life as a grand experiment — a journey of discovery, learning, and personal growth. Each day becomes an opportunity to gain new insights and experiences, sharpening your understanding of the world. How might this change the way you approach your days? Let’s explore how embracing life as an experiment can energize your actions, shape your decisions, and boost your sense of fulfillment.

The experiment of life

When you step back and think about it, life is, at its core, an experiment of discovery and growth. For some, this sense of exploration continues throughout their lives. For others, it fades away.

A young child sees a world of wonder and curiosity. Those who continue to embrace this world see life through a different, more vibrant lens. It becomes more exciting and enjoyable.

Why not treat your life as a Grand Experiment — one where you can try, refine, and repeat until you perfect what you seek? After all, every advancement in life is born from experimentation.

Our very nation is called “The Great Experiment” or “The American Experiment,” and this ongoing process has endured for nearly 250 years. We can only hope it will continue far into the future.

Look at the many experiments that brought electricity and light to the world. Imagine the patience it took to do over 10,000 experiments to create the first practical lightbulb. And that is only part of the story. It took numerous experiments to generate electricity and the electrical grid to power them!

And finally, think about the vast amount of experimentation needed to create today’s countless innovations and advancements. It is almost incomprehensible!

Experimenting in life

How would you approach your daily life if you saw each action as a small experiment? Isn’t that what life is — an ongoing series of trials and refinements?Nothing stops you from doing things over and over until you get them right, except your own mindset.

Viewing life through the lens of experimentation frees you from the fear of failing. The very meaning of experimenting is to keep trying, failing as often as needed until you succeed. Each setback becomes a stepping stone toward what you truly want. Progress is made by “failing forward.”As the futurist Richard Buckminster Fuller aptly noted,“There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”

Without experimenting, how would we learn, grow, or improve? As the English artist William Blake stated, “The true method of knowledge is experiment.” Life’s experiments teach us, help us mature, sharpen our skills, and prepare us for future opportunities.

The Grand Experiment

Once again, experimentation is all about trying, failing, learning, and trying again. That’s how we grow. Let’s explore some key experiments forming part of life’s Grand Experiment.

“It is only through failure and through experiment that we learn and grow.” — Isaac Stern

As children, we engage in the experiment of growing up. When we reach adulthood, we begin the experiment of becoming responsible. School, for instance, is one continuous experiment — testing, learning, succeeding, failing, and trying again, both inside and outside the classroom. Does this experiment end with graduation? Or does it continue as we take on new challenges and pursue lifelong learning?

Marriage is the ultimate experiment of collaboration between two people seeking to navigate life together. Parenthood is yet another experiment — figuring out how to raise children in an ever-changing world.

Most of us will work for forty years or more before entering the retirement experiment. Having retired myself, I find it exhilarating! Imagine decades of experience now applied freely to the next chapter of life.Retirement offers boundless opportunities to experiment — on your terms.

Reflecting on my nearly 50-year career, I realize the most rewarding experiments were those that helped me learn and develop new skills. Some were tedious, but in hindsight, the growth and success that followed made them invaluable.

“The biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently.We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.” — Charles F. Kettering

Thomas Edison’s thoughts written in the Smithsonian Magazine about experimenting include him saying, “In response to a question about his missteps, Edison once said, ‘I have not failed 10,000 times — I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.’” Fortunately, it rarely takes 10,000 failed experiments to accomplish much of what we want!

“There are no failures — just experiences and your reactions to them.” — Tom Krause

The mindset experiment

In closing, realize there are two types of people in the world. One type has a fixed mindset, prefers not to fail, and avoids failing whenever possible. They likely see the ongoing experiment of life as difficult. They too often take failure personally, keeping them from experimenting as much as they could.

The second type of person has what is called a growth mindset. To them, life is, as it should be, an experiment. They understand that failing doesn’t define them but moves them closer to their desires. They keep experimenting until they achieve what they want or reach a dead end. They have the mindset of the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

Which of the two mindsets is more like you? If you lean toward a fixed mindset, the good news is that you can change it. Shedding self-limiting beliefs and embracing empowering ones can transform you from a restricted life to one filled with possibilities.

Start by experimenting with just one small area of your life. If you fail, remember that it’s just one step in the process — never take it personally. Each attempt is a lesson learned. A failed experiment does not make you a failure; it brings you one step closer to success.

Once you make up your mind to start experimenting, you will find each success prepares you for the next and can change your life dramatically and permanently. Why not give it a try? You have little to lose and everything to gain!

Final thoughts

I hope you are encouraged to embrace your life as a Grand Experiment made up of countless smaller experiments. There is no greater freedom than being unafraid of failure and driven by curiosity, discovery, and growth.

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” — Henry David Thoreau

So, go ahead — experiment to your heart’s content and move confidently toward your dreams!