71. We should all fail more

So many of us are settling for lives we never failed at.

Those are lives that were never really lived in, either. 

This episode is your permission slip to start failing more, today, at the things that actually matter to you.

It might just be the most beautiful way to live.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Hey friends. I literally just woke up and I woke up with this instruction on my brain. Record a podcast on the importance of failing and why we should all be actively, aggressively trying to fail more. And because I woke up, I even forgot to do the introduction. Hello, you're listening to Liberatory Business. I'm your host, Simone. Saul. Thank you so much for listening. There it is. Um, I didn't even have had time to prepare notes. I literally just woke up. With this instruction in my brain, so I'm gonna do it. Why? Before I, this starts to feel like a bigger project and I don't do it. So here it goes raw. I don't know why. I think it was a dream that I had, and I can't even remember exactly what the dream was about. But the gist was this, let's say you have, um, an ambition to make. I don't know, a model airplane that can actually fly. Okay. I just made that up some. Somehow. Let's say you are obsessed with the idea of building a model airplane like in your garage that can actually fly. And let's say you didn't know anything about airplanes to start with. You didn't know anything about aerodynamics. Or I don't know. I don't know what those, what goes into that, right? You didn't know anything about it. And let's say you attempted to make a model airplane that can fly in your garage 272 times, and each time you failed. Now, have I ever tried to do something like that? No. Now this fictional person. Who has failed at making a model airplane that can fly 272 times, knows far more about airplanes and engineering and just like about like components and where they come from and how they fit together and physics and blah, blah blah. Knows far more about that than I ever will because I have never tried and failed at doing something like that 272 times. I think the real gain in life is what we learn, and if you have a goal that you are really passionate about and it matters to you enough that it's worth failing at again and again at the end, you walk away with so much learning regardless of whether you actually achieved what you set out to. Um, let's say another example is you have a goal to run a marathon and under, I don't even know what like average stats are, but I don't know, two and a half hours. Is that, let's say maybe that's like, oh, I don't know. Okay, whatever. Okay, I'm just pulling this number outta my ass. Let's say that's your goal, and let's say you run, you've run marathons eight times and every single time you fail to come at your goal, but every time you. Every time you did run, you tried. You really tried. You strategized, you did, tried different diets, tried different training regimens. You tried different pat um, terrains, right? And every single time you failed, guess what? After all of those eight failures, you now know so much more about your body and about just the art of running. And the sports mechanics of running and whatever, probably the running community. Then someone like me, ever will, who's never tried to come within a certain time goal in marathon or even run a marathon at all. I've never run a marathon, right? That person knows so much more about all of that due to all that went into their failures, and I think at the end of that person's life, they're gonna be able to look back at so much aliveness like, wow, I cared about something so much that I put this much into it and I learned so much from that process. That process changed me, I think when your goal, when you have a goal that you're pursuing, I think the most meaningful, beautiful thing about a human being is when they are trying to do something. I've always had that thought by the way. It's way less impressive to me. You know, someone who is at their glorious moment of winning the thing, succeeding at the thing, accepting the Academy Award, like that's all great, but that is not the most beautiful moment of that person's life. To me, the most beautiful per uh, part of that person's life is that time when they were so afraid that none of it was gonna work out, and everybody in the world. Was doubting them and they felt all alone. They felt so unqualified. They felt so unequipped, and in that quiet moment, two in the morning, they were like, I'm gonna try again. That is the most like beautiful snapshot of a human life to me. Someone who says, wow, there's no glory, no audience clapping for me. There's no money and riches and respect being rained down on me. No one's look, no one cares, and I'm gonna try to do this thing because it matters to me.'cause I believe in this'cause I believe in myself. So here I go, I'm gonna dust myself off and get up again and try. That's so beautiful. Those people in those moments are my heroes. And even when I look back at my own past, those moments of my life, the least glamorous moments when no one was, was even there and it was just me and my brain and my spirit, and I was like, Simone, I think we wanna try that again. Ah, ah. Those are the moments on my deathbed. I'm gonna look back and I'm gonna think, girl, you lived a great life. You lived a rich meaningful. Life that was full of human aliveness. And I think those moments are forged by failure because the ultimate point of all of this is not, you know, achieve or not achieve wind fail binary. That's so flat, that's so boring, that's uninteresting. But all those moments of showing up, the beauty of the aliveness and all the learning that you take away. From the, from failing at the things that matter to you. And I said, this came to me when I was waking up, right? This idea I needed to tell you all to fail more. And it just occurred to me at the same time that the things that are worth doing that are truly worth spending time on as a human being on this planet are worth failing it. And if it's not worth failing it, it's probably not worth doing. And. I wanna ask you what that is. What is so meaningful to you that it's worth failing at a hundred times, a thousand times? Like you could, you could die trying to make this work, trying to achieve an outcome, and even if you failed, it would still be meaningful. Like, what is so important to you that you can have that attitude about it? Because if you're, if you can think of something and you're really lucky, that means you really tapped into your aliveness. And if you're like, I'm not sure, well be receptive to finding out what that is for you. I don't repeat myself. Whatever's worth doing is worth failing, Ann. And failure is worth it for what it demands of you, which is that you bring your human aliveness that you, you bring your spirit. And also what it teaches you, because someone who failed at something a hundred times will walk away with so much more life than someone who played it safe, never tried, never won, but also never failed. So, I don't know, it's, it's actually an interesting question for myself as well.'cause when I ask myself at this point in my life, when I have already achieved a lot of things that I. I dreamed of achieving. What's something that is so meaningful to me that it's worth failing at a thousand times? And I gotta tell you, I don't immediately have an answer. I mean, it's probably like somewhere in my consciousness and I, I can't grab it right now. Also probably'cause I just woke up, but it'll probably come to me later. But I'm gonna think about that too.'cause let's all fail more and. If you like meet me or I don't know, find me online or whatever, tell me what you're, what you're feel, what you're excited about failing at more. I wanna know what is animating you, what do you care about? What do you enjoy learning about what's so important to you that it's worth that much beautiful failure? Okay, so I hope that spoke to you. And I'll talk to you next time with a podcast that probably has more planning. Bye. Hope you have a great day wherever you are.