Excellent points. I know so many people who never challenge themselves for fear of failure. I've done it myself. I like the baseball analogy. The best hitters in baseball fail 2 out of 3 at bats.

I prefer to eliminate the notion of failure in my self-judgment by focusing on metaphysical goals rather than material goals. In the context of what you wrote, If one sets the goal of consistently trying to improve, then material failure is simply a necessary procedure in the process of self-refinement. Nothing wrong with achieving a material goal the first try, but it requires trying. I know that so many times in my life I didn't try something because the material goal intimidated me, but the material goal a symbol for some sense of personal achievement. With the sense of achievement as the goal, trying becomes it's own material goal, and each little self-improvement becomes a success despite the triviality to the overall material goal.

Seek resistance, and harmonize with failure.

You must learn to die before you can learn to live.

You must learn how to lose before you can learn to win.

The only way forward is to go backwards. The only way to the light, is by going deep in the darkness.

There's no failure, only learning.

This is a great perspective. I beleive that most of our limitations are self inflicted. We all have external limitations but we usually never hit those because we have told ourselves we can't before we even try. I truly beleive most people are not living to their full potential. This really became real to me when I started working with teams and talking to other devs and saw how they limited themselves. Then I started seeing it in myself more acutely. Its a battle to push through this.

Great points. Part of the challenge of trying again-and-again is keep turning up. Accepting the knock back, picking yourself up and going again with renewed purpose and drive.

‘Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts’ - Churchill

Wise words. The least self-actualized people I know are the ones who don't really try anything self-generated, they just blindly accept from the list of default options. Some of them are pretty successful in the purely financial sense, but empty shells. You talk to them and it's like there's nobody inside.

Failure is a gift, I think, with the right attitude. I need to act like I believe this more.

❤️

Had to get this out. It was a total stick my boot the last day or two.

In retrospect, I could have generalized it more. It's really about accepting relatively small failures as the price to pay for some relatively big goal. If your tasks and projects are challenging enough, the only bigger goal you can be sure you are approaching is yourself.

I once heard this story about success: if you are here in this world you are a SUCCESS. Period!

Why? Because you won from millions and millions of other sperm cells in the race of life! You already got the Biggest possible Price!!! The price of Life!!!

While millions of others were dabbling around, I was focussed. I was lazer targetted to hit the BIG JACKPOT!

Since then I realized that only by being here I’m already a winner. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Enjoying the thing we call life.

When I’m feeling bad about something not turning out the way I wanted, expected or hoped, I think of that tiny sperm cell swimming and winning from millions.

I would say take the failure and success out of the equation. That lightens things up a bit. Success and failure will attach to your Ego and you will feel bad or great.

The thing with failure is that it will ultimately “mean” something to you personally. It will let you think you don’t have self worth. If you let it “mean” anything to you it will attach itself to you and now you feel YOU are a failure too.

A way to do it is to think like a scientist. You only are doing experiments. Everything you do, every action you take is an experiment. It has nothing to do with you. The experiment has a goal. Like say make code work and produce a result. It can also be: make 5000 dollars this month. The goal is a 1 or a 0. Binary. Either it is a 1 or a 0. It reaches its goal or not. There is no success or failure here. Only a 1 or 0. No attachment to yourself. No attachment to your SELF.

The experiment will teach you something. Therefore you should be excited to learn from the experiment.

If the experiment is a 0 you analyse it and find out how to improve it to turn it into a 1. You create a new experiment. Based on the lessoms learned from the last experiment.

If it is a 1. You take the next experiment to a next goal.

Thinking in experiments. 1 and 0.

This has worked for me. I take things lightly. More lightly.

Try this experiment. Let me know your thoughts.

And do not make it about YourSELF. It is just about 1s and Os.

Try frame your next action as an experiment like a scientist. Do not attach.

FIND YOURSELF AGAIN || Best Motivational Speeches of 2022 (So Far) - YouTube