July 14, 2020

562 - Nobody Remembers Your Failures

17 minutes

In this episode, we talk about how nobody remembers your failures.

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According to a small 2015 study with a sample size of about 1000. 31% of adults have a fear of failure.

This can lead to:

Inaction

Frustration

Low self-esteem

Negative effects across your entire life

What is failure anyway?

Here's how I look at it:

As long as you keep trying you will never fail.

Being "in progress" is not the same as "I've failed". stop treating them the same.

If you decide a goal isn't what you want anymore and abandon it then you have successfully dodged a bullet

The only way to "fail" is to want something and do nothing about it

With that said, this isn't the commonly accepted view of failure. So let's look at some examples of failures that no one remembers:

Bill Gates: $110 Billion. Started Microsoft and invented computing as we know it. Started a company in 1972 called Traf-O-Data to provide traffic data to engineers. Have you ever heard of it? Of course not, it was a massive failure. Then in 1975 he started Microsoft. What would have happened if Traf-O-Data had worked? The entire computing industry, everything we know as technology may be completely different.

Oprah Winfrey was the co-anchor on a prime-time news station back in 1976. The show flopped and she was fired after a year. She later went on to do...well basically everything. You know who Oprah is.

Usain Bolt was chosen for the 2004 Jamaican Olympic team in Athens. He was eliminated in the first round of the 200 m dash. Then in 2012 he became the first man in history to set 3 world records in a single Olympic Games competition.

The examples are endless

No one remembers or talks about your failures

No one cares about what you "didn't" do

The 3 examples I've given, while they may have viewed each of these events as failures at the time they all did exactly what they should have. They tried again. Bill Gates didn't stop after Traf-O-Data and say "well, I guess running a business isn't for me". Oprah didn't get fired and decide that she just wasn't a good host. Usain Bolt didn't get eliminated and say "well I guess that was my shot. I blew it".

I'm sure each of them were in pain. I'm sure each of them hurt. But they kept going. So they never failed. They just learned and tried again. That's what you need to do.

Resources:

https://www.beingguru.com/2018/09/bill-gates-1st-startup-traf-o-data-was-a-failure-in-70s-failure-is-just-a-word-if-you-look-back-at-your-mistakes/

https://www.baltimoremagazine.com/2011/5/1/when-oprah-was-ours

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/usain-bolt-worlds-fastest-man/0/usain-bolt-a-life-in-pictures/bolt-in-the-first-round-of-the-200m-at-the-2004-olympics-athens/

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By Gregg Clunis

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