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I want to talk about failure.
I came across this video from the founder of Spanx, before you laugh, she’s worth over $1 billion. I’m not. So I feel like I should listen to her.
I love that idea, “Failure for me is not trying”!
If you don’t want to do something because you’re afraid of failing, you ARE failing.
Nothing is worse than not trying.
Jeff Bezos, had a great, safe job at a software company. He had the idea for an online bookstore. Should he quit his job and take the risk? He did the math in his head: in 50 years, where will I have the most regret? If I try this online bookstore and fail or if I don’t even try it at all? He decided he’ll have more regret if he didn’t try at all.
Gold Medalist figure skater Scott Hamilton has calculated that he’s fallen 41,600 times on the ice. “The greatest ingredient in a joyful and productive life is failure”
It’s like the old Nike commercial with Michael Jordan,
“I’ve missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
This is the Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles:
https://youtu.be/PZeAcWhCrls
One of Jordan Peterson’s rules for life is “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. A line that we’ve used a lot is “Don’t compare your behind the scenes to someone else’s highlight reel.” That’s what people put on social media. But I like Peterson’s line better.
One last quick piece of advice if you are stuck with some aspect of your life, please read the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.
This book finally motivated me to buckle down and write my book. It’s all about The Resistance. This is the force that’s keeping you from doing the things you know you should do.
We think Th Resistance is an external force. We blame a million other things and people for why we’re not doing the thing we want to do: we blame our spouse, our job, our boss, the economy, but The Resistance is an enemy within. It’s self-generated and self-perpetuated. And it is programmed to do one thing: prevent you from doing your work.
You have to kill it.
You are more than your resistance, you are more powerful than the resistance, and what you are going to create is better than the resistance. Fail. Fail fast and fail forward. Learn from your failures, and celebrate them!
That’s on an individual level. I want to talk about it societally as well. We have to keep our society as one that celebrates risk and has the proper perspective on failure.
Nassim Taleb in the book Antifragile [CLICK HERE for a great analysis of the man theme of the book] makes the point that American kids have the worse test scores, but we have the strongest economy and more innovation and entrepreneurs. Why? Why doesn’t Japan, who is always at the top of the education test score rankings, have a stronger economy?
One reason is culture.
Our culture has been one that celebrates risk. People try new things and start new businesses and invent new products. But in Japan, if you risk and fail, it brings great shame on you and your family. So people are encouraged to not risk and not try new things.
There is a Jeff Bezos in Japan, with a great idea and the ability to do it, but his culture says, “dont risk.” So he doesn’t, and the Japanese version of Amazon, or whatever it is, doesn’t happen.
I fear our culture is becoming more risk averse.
I look forward, to be like Sara Blakely’s dad; to celebrate failures around the dinner table with my son because it means he’s taking risks. It means my son is growing. It means my son is becoming the fullest version of himself.
We talked about this on the radio the other day. A listener called in and shared a quote his boss has on the wall of their engineering company: Mario Andretti “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.”
So get out of your comfort zone. Get out and fail!
Two questions for you: What’s a major failure in your life you’ve made and how has it made you a stronger person. Second question, what’s something you’ve always been scared to do, and maybe now you want to publicly commit to? Share it in the comments and we’ll encourage you!