#199: Why You Should Study More Failures and Struggles in 2020

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com episode 19 9. Those notes include a summary of our discussion here, as well as links to resources I mention during the show. You know, I love a great success story, and I suspect you probably do too. I mean, if you're listening to the show, if you're into learning, understanding, success in any area of life, this is probably something you find interesting, maybe even fascinating. But there's something I feel we don't spend nearly enough time studying in our culture. We don't spend enough time understanding, learning from reading about failures and massive struggles. I'm referring to people, businesses, organizations, and movements that never made it despite putting in a massive amount of effort and sacrifice. In many cases, they did make it eventually at some point, but in a totally different way and totally different area. The point is, what they set out to do was, by the definition that many of us have, it was a failure. So we just don't spend, I feel, the time to really understand what's going on here and really seek out those stories and get to learn and study what these people or businesses did, why they did it, why it didn't work for them, how they struggled and why they struggled, what was the nature of the struggle, how they dealt with the failure when it did happen, how did they process that, what did they do? And of course, what they learned from the process. I feel this is a problem because of a concept in behavioral science by the name of survivorship bias or survival bias. And this is basically the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and then not even looking at or studying or examining those that did not. And typically we don't do it not because we don't want to, but because of their lack of visibility. Usually the people in the organizations, businesses, and movements that fail are not really that visible. Very few outlets are writing about them. There are very few books, podcasts, and stories out there in the mainstream. We're discussing these things in these situations. But the problem with just concentrating on those who did survive is that this can lead to false conclusions in many different ways. And I found a Great example of this when I stumbled on an article from Scientific American and they referenced the classic best selling book Good to Great by Jim Collins in this book, and it really is a fascinating book. Jim Collins found 11 companies that beat the stock market over a 40 year period. He analyzed what these companies did well, I mean, really analyzed what these companies did well, and listed all kinds of great lessons from the study and from this analysis. But just because we have the hindsight now doesn't mean that we have a predictable formula for finding the winners over the next, let's say, 40 year period. And in fact, as the article noted and I linked to it in the show notes, by the way, from 2001 to 2012, the stock of these 11 companies that Collins reference did worse than the overall stock market. Okay? So just because we can take a look back and map out exactly what they did and why they did it and how that ended up working out, doesn't mean we have a formula that will work in the future, for the next 40 years or 11 years or whatever. This approach of continually doing post hoc analysis is, when you think about it, fundamentally flawed. It often leads us to believe that if we just replicate exactly what a successful business or person or freelancer did 20 years ago to get to where she is today, that we're going to get the same results. And we know conceptually that's just not true. What that person did, what that business did, was a product of a series of unique circumstances. I mean, think about that. A unique combination of place and time in people and other unique variables that can never be replicated, at least not exactly. So this is a big reason why I am spending a little bit more time studying failure, studying real struggle, I just think it's important to look at both sides. It's fun, it's great, it's insightful to hear and read success stories. But there's so much wisdom contained in these stories of just struggle and failure. There's another reason though, why I'm doing it. And I guess let me explain it a little differently because I think this is going to resonate with you. I've gotten a bit jaded with success stories and I suspect that social media has a lot to do with that. Social media as you know, paints a distorted reality. I mean, it invites dangerous comparisons. It really, I've noticed a huge trend to what I like to refer to as forced and carefully crafted hero's journey, rags to riches stories, stories where it wasn't quite that neat and nicely packaged. But because we can kind of Fit it into this format of a hero's journey, it's much more compelling. So let's embellish it a bit so that it follows this kind of neat and packaged Hollywood type of a format or sequence that's going to captivate an audience. It's going to move people to a decision that's going to influence people. And listen, I get it, okay? As someone who's written, for instance, a ton of case studies or success stories for my writing, client stories are complex and sometimes not. Sometimes what you have to do as a writer is. Is you got to figure out how do I craft the best narrative possible. You know, I got a word count limit here, and how do I take this very complex, multifaceted story and weave it into a powerful narrative? So I get it. This is what writers do. However, it could very quickly get out of hand, and it can kind of get into a gray area of. Of, you know, what are we really just trying to manipulate here? So without going too deep into that, my whole point is, look, I have to be careful, and it's great to read about successes, and there's great value there. Look, it's important to know what's working, what has worked for whom, and why, because there are fundamental lessons there that we can all learn from. But my point here is that you have to be careful because, you know, if you take everything literally and you try to replicate things again, it's not guaranteed to deliver the same outcome, especially in situations where there are multiple variables out there that you can't control and you know you're setting yourself up for failure. If you really think that things are that easy again, does it mean we can't learn from successful people and what they did to get there? No. But I firmly believe that there's an incredible amount of insight and wisdom contained in the stories of people and businesses that failed. And we should make it a point to learn from their experience. And that's why I want to challenge you to seek out and learn from those stories in the coming year. We're about to enter a great year, 2020, and I think this is an opportunity to just really make a commitment to yourself that you're going to maybe take a different approach to what you read. And I want to encourage you to seek out stories of struggle, stories of disappointment, of failure, of loss of pain. I tell you, if you're an optimist like I am, that is not the natural tendency. I don't like to naturally surround myself or immerse myself in what could be considered Negative stories. But look, that's life. Life is full of failure and disappointment and struggle. And life is not all rainbows and sunshine and unicorns. So why not learn from all sides? And you might very well be doing that now. So if you are, I commend you for doing that. I have to admit that until, you know, a year or two ago, I really wasn't seeking those types of stories. Okay. I wasn't trying to learn from them. It was just my optimist tendency just drove me to a different kind of story. So I want to give you three specific resources. If you're looking for a great place to start, or if you're already on the way and you're looking for some more material along these lines, I can't think of too many better resources than these. And in fact, if you have some others, I would love to hear about them. Because again, I'm seeking these resources. So the first one, and these are in no particular order. Okay, I'll give you two books and I'll give you a documentary series. The first book is the Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. This is a wonderful little book. I mean, just to kind of give you an idea how strongly I feel about it, I don't read books twice, so I'll highlight and I'll write in the margins. And many times I'll go back and just kind of skim through my highlights and my notes. That really helps with recall. And especially if I haven't implemented everything, it makes it so much easier to go back and figure out what's still left to implement, what I want to consider implementing and what I might want to ignore. But where the obstacle is the way. I decided that this is a book I'm going to read at least once a year. So I read it, I don't know, a few years ago. Then a year went by or so. I didn't do anything much with it. It was extremely inspirational. But then I picked it back up last year because it was just that powerful. I had forgotten how good it was. Just like with so many books, you read it once and it's great, but then maybe the timing wasn't perfect. But then a year or two, several years later, you're in a better place to receive that information, to receive the deeper insights. So that's what happened last year. When I picked it back up, it hit me differently. It really did resonated with me so much more. So I picked it up again last year, and I picked it up again this year. And again I found things that I just hadn't discovered or hadn't really processed the first time around, or I had had new experiences since then that enabled me to get much more out of it or pick up a few nuggets that I hadn't really thought through all the way like I did the first couple of times. So the Obstacle Is the Way Fantastic. Small book, an easy read. It's so well put together. And the whole premise of the book is we need to shift the way we think about struggle, failure and disappointment in our society. We tend to view that as a negative thing. Those are negative things. We don't want that. What do we wish for our children? We wish they didn't have to struggle. We wish that they could have an easier life. We don't wish bad things on other people. Okay, that's just a natural tendency. But the thesis of this book is, look, I know that sounds great and that might be what we think we want, but real growth in every area of life happens through struggle and failure and disappointment. So we need to start looking at those things as a gift, as a blessing, even if we don't look at it that way at the very beginning when they first happen. Because something good always comes out of these situations, whether we wish to seek those things out or not. It's up to us. This can be a very, very difficult concept to accept when you're really struggling. And look, let's face it, some people out there are really, really struggling. You might be one of them. It's very difficult to have that conversation with someone when they've been dealt a really, really bad hand in life. Especially if it's happened recently and if they've been struggling with it for a while, I can understand that. All I can say is this book is filled with wisdom. Ryan Holiday, the author, is a relatively young guy. This reads like a book that a 75 year old man or woman wrote. There's just so much wisdom there. So the Obstacle Is the Way Top recommendation there. Another top recommendation is the book Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins. The subtitle is Master your mind and defy the odds. This book has blown me away. David Goggins is a Navy seal, Army Ranger and Air Force Tactical Air Controller. He is retired now. He came from struggle. When you read his story, you squirm. I cannot imagine growing up the way he did, what he had to deal with, what he faced, the struggles he went through. Extremely, extremely painful and inspiring the way he pushed through that. What I love about it is the sincerity, the authenticity of his story. Here again, this wasn't a linear path, lots of ups and downs, and he's very honest about them. And so many great concepts in here. But one of the big premises is that, look, we're using 40% of our abilities at most. There's an untapped 60% minimum that most of us just aren't even using. In fact, 40%. The way he talks about it, very few people even get to 40%. And of course, even fewer get beyond that. He talks about building a calloused mind, callousing your mind becoming stronger by using challenges and adversity and failures and disappointment as fuel to reach a different place that maybe we haven't ever been to. And it's really about mastering the mind. Again, I can't say enough good things about it. I do have a warning with that book. It has very, very strong language. But here's what I would say. I don't really. I kind of lose respect for a writer when they're using strong language just as a hack or as a crutch. But this didn't come across that way at all. This is the way this man thinks. The context is right. I felt that that's fine. But again, a lot of language, a lot of language, that's something that offends you. Then you may want to skip it. But I wish you wouldn't. And I wish you'd keep an open mind because it's just really a life changing book. The third and last recommendation that I'm going to give you. And again, there are just so many others. I wanted to pick three really, really strong ones. But this last one is a documentary series on Netflix called Losers and Losers Profiles. I want to say it's about eight different athletes who have just dealt with some serious, serious disappointments in their careers. And it talks about what happened. They come out and they just explain it. It's raw and it's very real. Wow. It'll open your eyes to a world that it's incredible what these people went through. And when you think how everything was on the line. You and I live in a world where we can continually just pivot shift, reinvent ourselves. Many of these athletes, they had everything riding on their career. They had all those eggs in that one basket and they bet big. And when they face a loss and just take the Olympics, for instance, that might be it for them. And just to understand what that's like for others, I feel like sometimes I'm. I have to deal with things that seem unfair. I can reinvent myself. I can pivot, I can shift. I can do a lot more to correct my failures than many of these athletes can. But they talk about what they went through, they talk about how they dealt with these failures, and in many cases they go deep into explaining how they've dealt with those failures and those struggles. And it's just humbling. It's inspiring. Really love that side of it. This is a side you don't typically see in sports, the world of sports. This is a classic arena where all you're going to hear about are the successes, because nobody out there really wants to talk about the failures. Not at length and not like they did with this documentary. So I think you're really going to enjoy that one. It's on Netflix, so if you have Netflix, check it out. If you don't have Netflix, I tell you, this right here is worth doing the 30 day free trial for. Just get the 30 day free trial and check out losers. You're really going to enjoy it. Look, these resources, there are many more. And in fact, like I mentioned earlier, if you have others, I would love to hear about them. This is an area of study that I want to go deeper into because there's so much opportunity to learn. I think you're going to find these stories to be inspiring. They'll teach you so much. You're going to walk away a better person. And I think you can have a newfound respect for what it takes to achieve big and audacious goals in business and in life. So that's it for today. I wish you a happy New Year and I hope that the year 2020 brings you great health, happiness and prosperity. And I hope that you might start looking at your failures as blessings, as tools to make you better, stronger and smarter. This has been Ed Gandia. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day. Happy New Year.

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