All the Words

If you know all the words to something and someone else doesn’t, then they don’t know if you mess up unless you tell them.

My father was (among many other things) a drummer. He once told me one of his ‘tricks’ and it was so utterly brilliant it changed my life. And I’m not a drummer. He told me that if he ever messed up while he was playing, he’d just deliberately repeat the mistake four measures later, and then it would just sound like part of the song and no one would know.

See, when you see your mistakes, you’re looking at them with deep, inside knowledge. You know exactly what was supposed to happen, but no one else does. Your mistakes are mostly invisible – it’s your reaction to them that people notice.

Whether you’re rocking your way through an epic drum solo or delivering the quarterly business report, you might make a mistake. Just roll through it. Repeat it, even – on purpose, and in the right spot. Make all the words yours, and none of them can be wrong.