Think of a situation where you are afraid of failure. Visualize yourself hitting an obstacle, allow yourself to feel the fear, and then see yourself moving forward. Next, take a few minutes to plan how to overcome any obstacles that may be standing in your way. Then you will see yourself succeed despite these obstacles. Today Ever Widening Circles (EWC) will transport you to a think tank full of fearless innovators in a magical place called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) where scientists and engineers challenge the impossible. Researcher Regina Dugan shows us what can happen when the fear of failure is banished from every corner of the creative process. just think of the failures, the restarts and the enormous setbacks it took to create the two wonders in the photo we opened with: robot dogs. Real people with hopes and fears, complex personal lives and fragile egos – just like ours – created them! But any self-respecting science geek will tell you that you have to risk swinging and losing big, before you hit a home run! Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The great leaps forward in history come from people who refused to give up. Everything was possible. They kept swinging. Here's a great practical example that most of us haven't heard of: Did you know that right now there are 3,700 communications satellites circling our planet, and 1,100 of them aren't even working anymore. The following image is a DARPA artist's rendering of the Phoenix Concept II, a giant mechanism that could orbit the earth by collecting old communications satellites and reusing them! If you want to excel at your job, find your passion, or climb the proverbial ladder, there's something you have to do: you have to come up with new ideas, repeatedly. And to do that, you have to get used to failure. Enter the world-renowned organization for innovation: DARPA. Today Ever Widening Circles (EWC) will transport you to a think tank full of fearless innovators in a magical place called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) where scientists and engineers challenge the impossibility of building a new generation of extraordinary technologies. Researcher Regina Dugan shows us what can happen when the fear of failure is banished from every corner of the creative process. Regina's argument: You should be nice to nerds. If you don't already have one in your life, buy one. They are changing the world for all of us. – Regina Dugan Just think of the failures, the restarts, and the huge hiccups it took to create the two wonders in the photo we opened with: robot dogs. Real people with hopes and fears, complex personal lives and fragile egos – just like ours – created them! But any science geek worth his salt will tell you that you have to risk swinging and losing big, before you hit a home run! The most incredible innovations in history come from people who refused to give up. Everything was possible. They kept swinging. Here's a great practical example that most of us haven't heard of: Did you know that right now there are 3,700 communications satellites circling our planet, and 1,100 of them aren't even working anymore. The following image is a DARPA artist's rendering of the Phoenix Concept II, a gigantic mechanism capable of orbiting the earth by collecting old communications satellites and reusing them! This is what fearless genius can look like: When you remove the fear of failure from the equation, impossible things suddenly become possible. – Regina Dugan Same way of thinking!