If you’re like most people, you’ve been told your whole life that failure is the best teacher.
You've been inspired by Edison and his ten thousand light bulbs, or Michael Jordan getting cut from his high school team. You might even have "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" on a mug somewhere. It's deeply ingrained in our culture that failure is the path to success.
So here's a question: the last time you really failed at something you cared about, what did you do?
Did you jump for joy, ecstatic to apply the new life lesson?
Or did you resize your ambitions and let the moment rattle around your head at some ungodly hour?
Turns out ‘growing from our failures’ is incredibly hard to do.
In today’s episode of Solved, we break down why every piece of advice you've ever received about failure has, well... failed you.
Avoiding it, bouncing back from it, even embracing it, all assume failure is something it's not.
We dive into the three kinds of failure and why the setback itself matters less than you think. We get nerdy with the science of why failure hurts so damn much. And we cover when quitting is (and isn't) a failure, plus the five-question test that reveals the difference.
You'll walk away with a completely new way to define failure, how to see it in others, and actually learn from your mistakes (it's not as simple as you think).
You can listen to the full episode here:
Because you’re on this list (thank you!), you also get early access to the Episode Guide to set yourself up for success... with failure.
Apologies in advance: this episode will not teach you how to avoid failure. On a long enough timeline, the failure rate of everything is 100%.
…But that’s even more reason to learn how to get really, really good at it.
We hope you enjoy the episode. And if you do, pass it on to someone who could use it too.
Mark Manson
#1 New York Times Bestselling Author