A short motivational talk by John Assaraf advising listeners to reframe failure as learning. He explains that the meaning you assign to failing shapes emotions and brain responses (amygdala/motor cortex), recommends planning for possible failures and building a "failure muscle," and uses the baby-learning-to-walk metaphor to encourage failing forward and taking more action.
Chapters
And I made a master list of videos that I'm going to be sharing with you over the next few months. And when I create these little short tidbit videos for you, and I thought today I would talk to you about something that has to do with your mindset and specifically around being prepared to fail. Now, a lot of people, when they think of the word failing, they have a negative association with that. And one of the things that I've learned over many, many years of studying my own mindset and the mindset of thousands of employees and people that I teach around the world is failure seems to have a negative connotation. But think about it for a moment. What if you change the meaning of the word failing to learning? Are you prepared to learn? Are you prepared that when you try something that doesn't work, that you reframe it in your own mind, rethink about it in a way that is learning versus something negative that we've gotten associated with the word failure to believe in our own minds. And so the reason I share this with you is the meaning that you give anything will determine how you feel about it. And so if you are afraid, you have a fear of failing, chances are the meaning that you give failing is what's causing you to have a negative emotion about it. But more importantly, if the emotion is negative, you're going to trip your amygdala, part of the brain that's responsible for keeping you safe and away from risk or danger. And it basically shuts down the motor cortex of your brain. All that means is that chances are you're not going to take action because there's some automatic responses in your brain that's going to shut down your ability to take action. So what if you chose right now that failing means I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm getting more information that can help me move forward. Why not fail forward through knowledge and experience, and that way you're prepared to fail. The other thing that you can do is think about failing in advance. What do I mean by that? Make a list of what are all the things that could go wrong if what you try or do doesn't work. And then you balance out whether you're prepared to feel a certain way, whether you're prepared for the ramifications or the consequences of failing or learning. And if you're not, then maybe step back a little bit and take fewer steps that may not have as much risk associated with it until you build your failure muscle. What I can share with you is highly successful people are not afraid of failing. Not because it's not painful or doesn't hurt the ego, but because they have learned how to associate failure with learning. They've also learned how to associate failure the same way that a parent associates a child falling when it's a baby and getting back up again and then falling getting back up again. Every time a baby falls and gets up, it builds its balance muscles. Its builds its muscles and its legs and its hips and its abdomen, and every part of their body gets strengthened by the falling or failing. So change the way you look at failure, accept the reality that comes with learning, and you will be able to master your mindset and really take more action than ever before, because you will stop your brain from keeping you away from doing what you should be doing. Fail and fail forward. Learn and change the meaning of it, and you'll achieve more success than ever before.
