THE JRNY 019 - Why We Should Fail More
Hey Reader đ ,
I want to start by asking you to get real honest with yourself.
When was the last time you failed?
And I mean truly failed.
Because there are two types of failures.
And Iâm going to get to that later, but for now, Iâm talking about failures where you gave your very best, your 110% and still failed.
Did you answer honestly?
Really think if you tried hard enough⌠because thatâs very important.
Okay. If you cannot remember the last time you failed or it happened a very long time ago, then that might be the reason why youâre not thriving and succeeding like you want to.
I know, this sounds very counter intuitive. You might be saying to yourself âIsnât success the opposite of failing?â
âIf I havenât failed recently, doesnât that mean that Iâve been succeeding?â
Well, youâre not entirely wrong. You see, success and failure are indeed opposites, but theyâre more akin to opposite sides belonging to the same coin.
When you flip a coin, a lot of us focus on the outcome of the coin toss. Is it going to land on heads? or tails?
The coin toss itself almost becomes irrelevant; however, that, for me, is the most crucial part.
The fact that you even flipped the coin in the first place.
That you actually put yourself in a position where you can get heads or tails.
That you can succeed or fail.
And I think not enough of us do this (myself included).
Instead, I think most of us do one of two things:
We simply avoid any situation that involves any type of failure.
This one, Iâm sure you know it.
Maybe your boss or manager asks the team to give a presentation at work and, even though youâre the most qualified for it, youâre too scared about embarrassing yourself in front of your colleagues so you simply shy away and make yourself all small until someone volunteers for it.
We settle to have âfakeluresâ instead of failures.
This is the second type of failure that I was referring to at the beginning of my text. Whereas the first ones were âtrue failuresâ, these are âfake failuresâ.
So what exactly are fakelures?
Fakelures occur when we are presented with an opportunity to fail or succeed by giving our best efforts and living with the results, but instead of doing that, we simply decide to not try our best.
So weâre not completely avoiding the situation, weâre simply not owning it.
An example from my personal life would be playing badminton against someone whom I probably should beat, but am not 100% confident about it.
Instead of giving it my all and finding out whether I can or cannot really beat my opponent, I decide to give 75-80% effort to create some sort of a fake âwin-winâ situation.
If I win, then my ego gets stroked knowing that I was able to win without giving it my all.
And if I lose, then I can always justify to myself that had I given it my all, I probably could have won.
In reality, there is practically nothing to gain from doing this (except an ego boost).
The real win-win situation is when we put ourselves in an uncomfortable position without honestly knowing what the outcome will be.
We might succeedâŚ
or we might fail.
We do not know.
All we know is that weâre giving it our all.
Now, let me explain why itâs a win-win.
If we do succeed, then now we have undeniable proof that we succeeded in this particular thing which will give us more confidence for the next time.
However, if we fail, then now we have undeniable proof that our all was not enough.
And sometimes itâs really hard to admit this.
But the great thing about giving it our all and failing is that thereâs no denying it. We cannot invent excuses and feel better about ourselves like when we have fakelures.
As people seeking growth, this does not mean itâs the end of the road, on the contrary, it simply means that we still have room to grow.
This is a crucial part in making it a win-win situation.
We need to look back on that failure and ask ourselves âwhy did I fail?â, âwhere was I lacking?â, âwhere can I still improve?â.
It is only once we find the cause of our failure, internalize the failure, create a plan to overcome it and implement a plan that we can truly grow.
Itâs unfortunate, but we rarely learn anything from succeeding.
And as we all know, no learning = no growth.
As long as it does not affect our confidence. We need to continue to put ourselves in situations where we can fail.
The only time we should stop is if we do not want to grow or we see our confidence or commitment getting affected by our constant failures.
When that happens, we simply need to find ways of getting small wins until our morale is back upâŚ
And get right back to failing.
So once again, let me ask you:
When was the last time that you failed?
Hey you ! Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this post.
If you like something in the article or simply want to discuss with me or give me some constructive feedback, feel free to email me @ onlythetruenjhs@gmail.com
We'll talk more next time and until then, don't forget to enjoy your life! âď¸
â Nicholas