Matt
Preparing For Descent

A few weeks ago I asked my fantastic grade 9 class to give me a prompt for my blog.  They quickly constructed a bank of provocative ideas for me to navigate.  One of the prompts asked me to explore the classic cat question: Do cats always land on their feet?

I realize in writing this, perhaps that timeless question needs to be revised to ‘Do cats always land on their paws?’ but let’s not get lost in the semantics of this line of inquiry.

Sadly, grade 9, I am not an expert in cat flight trajectory paths, but I’m not about to let that stop me from attempting to unpack this question.

I am however, a pretty experienced Youtuber.  A quick search helped me find this:

When you experience trauma when you are relaxed, you will likely experience less injury

Chill out.

That seems to be the big takeaway lesson from that pretty rad slow motion cat falling video.  Relax.  How does this apply to our species?

If you think you are about to make a mistake, breathe.  Don’t tense up, instead be flexible.  While the mistake you’ve made might be a completely different story to that of a cat trying to fly, consider this: how you react to ‘a fail’ epic or otherwise is more important to the mistake itself.

Fail Forward.

Huh?  Mistakes matter.

“You will fail. It’s going to happen. … Each mistake is simply another iteration on the journey toward success.”

(John Spencer, Launch)

Cats are remarkably curious.  According to the internet they are also mad ninjas.  Be a curious ninja.  Cats take crazy leaps, and whether or not they always land on their paws/feet isn’t really the essential point.  Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, curiosity encouraged the cat to find out just how ninja that cat could be.

How will curiosity fuel your next leap?

zuikoalex
Pounce!

Thank you to Flickr for your bank of Creative Commons Images

Matt
Preparing For Descent

zuikoalex

 Pounce!