Is the 8-year-old you ashamed of your life?
The other day I realized there are two kinds of failures, one we all talk about as something positive, and one no one talks about or even recognizes as such.
And that’s a problem.
The first failure is the one mentioned by the Zuckerbergs, Vaynerchucks, Tony Robbins and other so-called gurus. It’s the one entrepreneurs talk about: the failure as a different outcome than the one you expected when you gave it all and didn’t achieve what you set out to. It’s the failure that teaches you something, the one leaders around the world have talked about for decades, from Obama to Steve Jobs.
The failure you should embrace. The failure you learn something from. Maybe this failure is not a failure at all. We shall rather call it: “learning experience”.
Learning experiences are hard, but they’re positive for you. No matter what you go through, a learning experience teaches you something. We need these lessons to grow, and that’s the reason why we love learning experiences and celebrate them.
But I’m not sure they’re failures.
I think there is another kind of failure and it’s way more common than anyone would like to admit. And it’s the negative failure no one talks about. It’s the failure we consciously seek. Every day many times a day.
“What?” You ask.
“I would not look for failure.”
But yes you do.
It’s the failure that represents the easy way out. It’s staying under the covers a few more minutes. It’s eating red meat because fuck you planet. It’s staying up late watching TV. It’s scrolling for hours a feed that never really changes. It’s doing it the way you’ve always done it even if the new way might work better.
But the new way requires courage.
The new way requires effort.
It’s easy not to take the difficult step. It’s easy not to change. The real failure is a series of easy choices resulting in bad habits.
Put a few bad habits one after the other, and you got a life of failures.
A life the 8-year-old you would be ashamed of.
Let’s think of the opposite of failure for a second. It’s called, obviously, success. But what is a success? The way I see it, success lies in the small things. It means struggling well and be a tiny bit better than the day before.
Many think specific moment shape our lives. I think every day we shape our lives, carved like stones facing the ocean. A bit by bit, every day.
Every morning waking up while the whole world is asleep to get an extra hour or two of productivity. Every day choose to read a book and use your brain imagining things instead of binge-watch yet another tv series.
There is no magic. Success is a result of sustained actions over time.
Success is usually the difficult decision, the courageous step towards a better you.
Sorry to be the one breaking this down for you, but your friends and colleagues are among the hardest obstacles to overcome on your quest to a better you.
It’s a primordial instinct: your friends want you to fail because if you fail, you’re like them. And if you’re like them, you’ll fit right in.
If you succeed, even just once, you are better than them, and who enjoys someone else’s success?
- “Here, I brought you a donut.”
- “What do you mean let’s go jogging together? How about we just chill together?”
- “You must watch this tv series, and do it tonight. This is literally the most important thing in the world right now. Everyone is talking about it.”
- “Last weekend was the best: I drunk so much! What did you do? Woke up early and workout? Haha lol.”
And it goes on until you also fail and they’ll feel better about themselves. You’re in this together now.
Remember the last time you talked about the last season of MIRROR? Crazy, right?
But when was the last time you discussed your recent struggle to achieve something truly important for you?
When was the last time your friends were genuinely interested to know about your goals and objectives?
How many times you met to plans for the future and discussed your goals for the next year, instead of what you did last weekend or when is the next binge-drinking party?
Is the last season of Stranger Things more critical and satisfactory than that online course you wanted to take but never had the time to? Shock news: most online courses last less than your usual TV series.
But the online course is not an easy way out. None of your friends are taking it, they're watching Making of a Murderer Season 2, why shouldn’t you?
Look, I fail every day, I struggle with procrastination, working late, making good habits and breaking them, eating pizza and chocolate and I am most likely not raising my kids the way books suggest.
But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all thrive for the better.
Because something is going in the wrong direction.
What I see in the news is that people have stopped caring.
Here is the thing: the second type of failure is the failure everyone embraces without admitting it. This failure changes its name in the community and becomes “the norm.”
It’s the norm to sleep late. It’s the norm to hate Mondays. It’s the norm to gift to yourself brain-switched-off nights of binge drinking after hard days at work. It’s the norm to complain. It’s the norm to fault everything and everyone else but oneself.
In the end, it doesn’t even feel like you are even failing anymore when instead the entire community is.
Look around you. It seems no one cares.
But what if you do?
What if you do care?
What if you are more than they think you are?
What if I told you that because you’re still reading this, something is stirring inside you that is waiting to be unleashed?
What if I told you there is so much more to you than this?
What if you would just try?
I believe if we all try a bit harder, the whole world will benefit from it.
Your friends would benefit from it.
You would benefit from it.
Let’s make that 8-year-old proud.
Let’s take the less-traveled path.
