Successful people count their losses, not just their wins. The speaker argues that tracking failures and learning from setbacks builds character and drives real growth, not wealth or status. He urges you to revisit your own failures and use them to refine your approach.
I want to talk to you about the value of a loss. See, throughout life, we're so caught up in measuring the successes that people have, and we miss the true value of the loss. I want to show you a clip real quick. This is, uh, Kevin Costner Asin Kutcher in The Guardian. And I think this right here says it all. So, so listen to this real quick. Now leave it.
Where do you go? I got to know one thing. What's your real number? 22. 22. It's not bad. It's not 200. It's not—
22 is the number of people I lost, Jake.
Only number I kept track of.
See, the rookie wanted to know how many successes he had, but the senior who's retiring, never counted the victories. He counted the losses. He kept track of the losses because, see, it's in the time of the losses where our true character is established, where our true foundation is built. If you're not growing, if you're not building, if you're not learning from the losses, you're never evolving. And so we're so caught up in how successful somebody is, and we look at their bank account, we look at their fancy cars, We look at their big houses. But we don't understand how they really got there. And we— they really got there because they measured the losses. They looked at every loss, every mistake, every downturn, figured out what they did wrong, learned from that, evolved, adapted, overcame, and then saw the opportunity to become better next time around. See, the true measure of life is not how many times you succeed. We succeed, but how deeply we grow each time we fall. You need to understand in life, you're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna have failures, and you can't allow that to define you. That needs to refine you. That needs to reignite you. That needs to let you know that no matter what, You're gonna learn and you're not gonna do that again. I tell my people, fail forward. You're better off failing by trying than not trying at all. See, more people just don't do because of the fear of failure. And therefore they never get to experience the wins. The true measure of life is not how many times we succeed, seed, but how deeply we grow each time we fall. Look back on your own life. Look at how many times you've tried something and failed. And did you then try it again a different way to have success, or did you give up? Did you just lay down? Did you just say, well, this just isn't for me. I tried. I failed. I lost everything. Therefore, I can't do it now, I'm too scared. I sure wish I was like so-and-so. I sure wish I had the success of so-and-so. I'll guarantee you go ask so-and-so, how many times did you fail to achieve the success? And they'll tell you exactly how many times. Because that's the score successful people keep. That's the score that's measured. That is the adaptation that happens every time is here's where I messed up, here's where I failed, here's where I made a bad decision. Now let's redo it a different way. Count the losses and let the wins measure themselves. Thank you very much.
