Launch, Learn, Adjust, Repeat

I used to believe that careful planning was the path to a meaningful life. That if I could just map out every contingency, anticipate every obstacle, and craft the perfect blueprint, I could avoid failure altogether. I spent years at the drawing board of my own existence, refining hypotheticals and gaming out scenarios that would never materialize in quite the way I imagined. Looking back now, I realize I was building rockets that would never leave the ground.

Then something shifted. I began to notice a different way of moving through the world—one that didn't rely on perfection before the first step, but on the courage to take that step and discover what happens next.

The contrast between NASA's legacy approach and SpaceX's philosophy became a mirror for my own life. NASA, with its meticulous decades-long planning cycles, represents the way I used to think: measure seventeen times, cut once, and pray you got it right. SpaceX, on the other hand, designs to the minimum viable product and tests relentlessly. They launch, they learn, they adjust, they repeat. And yes, sometimes their rockets explode in spectacular fashion. But each explosion is a teacher. Each failure is a conversation with reality.

Testing implies failure, and for the longest time, that felt like a flaw in the system. We're taught to avoid failure, to see it as a personal deficiency or a waste of resources. But I've come to understand that failure isn't the opposite of success—it's the raw material of wisdom. When we fail, we gain real data. Not the sanitized, theoretical projections we construct in our minds, but the messy, irreplaceable truth of what actually happens when ideas meet the world.

Real data is a more effective dataset than theoretical because it doesn't flatter us. It doesn't bend to our assumptions or confirm our biases. Theoretical understanding, for all its elegance, resides in our assumptions—those thoughts with no real substance, those castles built on clouds. They feel solid until we try to stand on them. Then we discover they were always vapor.

Real, life-changing substance only comes from experience. Not from thinking about the experience, not from reading about someone else's experience, but from our own embodied encounter with the unknown. And experience can only be gained through action. This is the beautiful, terrifying truth: we cannot think our way into transformation. We must live our way there.

Action comes with inherent risk, and this is where most of us hesitate. Risk feels dangerous because it is dangerous—not necessarily to our physical safety, but to our carefully constructed sense of who we are and what we're capable of. Risk asks us to release our grip on certainty and step into the spaciousness of not-knowing. It asks us to become students again, beginners, explorers willing to be wrong.

But here's what I've discovered: risk empowers us to act, grow, and change continually. Not someday, when conditions are perfect. Not after one more certification or credential. Now. In this imperfect, glorious present moment. Risk is the gateway to aliveness, the permission slip we've been waiting for to finally become who we're meant to be.

A shorter, more agile approach to life is best versus methodical long-term planning—not because planning is wrong, but because life rarely unfolds according to our blueprints. The world is too wild, too creative, too responsive for our five-year plans to capture. When we adopt the rhythm of launch, learn, adjust, repeat, we enter into partnership with reality rather than trying to dominate it.

This isn't recklessness. It's a different kind of wisdom—one that values iteration over perfection, curiosity over certainty, and presence over projection. It's the wisdom of the gardener who plants seeds without knowing exactly which will flourish, who tends what emerges rather than forcing a predetermined outcome.

So now, when I feel the familiar pull toward over-planning, toward waiting until everything is perfect, I remember those SpaceX rockets. I remember that the ones that fly are the ones that launch. And I ask myself: what small thing can I test today? What minimum viable version of my dream can I bring into the world, knowing it won't be perfect, knowing it might fail, knowing that either way, I'll learn something true?

The answer is always the same: begin.