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Hey, what's up? This is Leo for actualised.org. And today, I want to cover the topic of how you should think about failure. Because the way that you're thinking about failure right now is probably not very resourceful. And I want to suggest an alternate way really 180 degree shift in how you look at failure. And so let's go into this, there's gonna be some good examples here, some in depth stuff, a lot more is gonna be covered in the article below. So this issue of failure, right now, I think, the default way that we grew up thinking about failure, the way that most people do is they equate failure with bad, so failure equals bad. And the alternative model I'm not gonna bury the lede here is to think that failure equals good, failure is good. And now it sounds like this is a little bit of like positive thinking, or just like, What the hell is this guy talking about? Why it's failure? Good? Isn't this some just sort of some sort of mental reframe that you're doing? And in fact, failure is not good? Isn't that just a way to mask the reality of situation? And what's interesting here is that you know, me, I'm not a positive guy, I'm more of a realist, I tend to think of myself as a realist, and maybe even a pessimist sometimes. And so for me, it's important to, to not just brainwash yourself into thinking positively, but to have that grounded in something. And so the reason that I'm advocating this viewpoint of failure equals good, it's actually because I think there's some, some truth behind it. And in fact, I think that's, that's what the real case is, is that failure is basically a mechanism that feeds a lot of the progress in your life specifically feeds understanding. So let's, let's go into this and kind of dissect this idea, and and see what are the pros and cons of, of these two models. And we're also going to look at some examples. So how is it the failure is a is a is a good thing. Failure is good, because it's a way for you to gain understanding of something. If you think about it, how do you learn to understand things in the world, you probably understand your job, you probably understand certain aspects of relationships, you probably understand things about the world, how stuff works, maybe understand physics, because you studied in school, maybe understand biology history. And the reason you understand these things, I would submit is that you went through a process of trial and error, and you've had successes as well as failures. To build that understanding within you. So what you have to do is you basically have to create a model a mental model in your head of how something works. And the way to do that, the best way to do that is through a combination of both successes and failures. And when people get fixated on this idea of only going for the successes, and judging the failures as bad, and doing everything in their power to avoid the failures. Really, if you're doing that, then you're selling yourself short. Because those failures are valuable. Those failures tell you with certainty as to what doesn't work. And that can be quite valuable in various different situations. Now, I'm not saying that you need to focus on failure to the exclusion of success. But focusing on success to the exclusion of failure is also backwards, and actually not very realistic. I think it's natural for us. The question I have is really, you know, why do we think this way? Why, why is it that we naturally tend to think that failure is bad, and success is good. One theory is that, we do that, because we've been kind of socially conditioned. So as you're growing up as a kid, you do something wrong, your parents smack you across the head, or you're doing something wrong at school, you get bad grades. So that's like a feedback mechanism that tells you that you should be succeeding instead. And basically, anytime you make a mistake, people harp on you, they criticize you, they judge you for it. And so over time, you learn just to not make mistakes, because it's it becomes painful. So I think that that mechanism is definitely in place. That's like social pressure. That can be very powerful. But I think that even more deeply than that, it's that it's within our biology, to want to be efficient, and to be effective. And so I think whenever you're undertaking civilization or taking a new project, and you're doing something new, maybe something outside of your comfort zone that you're not quite familiar with. Let's take the example of like starting a business a good example, if you've never started a business before and you're starting one up all the sudden, there's a lot of unknowns, a lot of variables that you're dealing with. That will have you second guessing yourself, you'll start to have fears about taking the wrong move. Should I run this marketing campaign or that one? Should I enter this market or that one? Which What should my niche be? Should it be this type of niche or this type of niche? What if I make a mistake? What if I choose the wrong niche? What if I invest money in the wrong One thing, what if I invest my time in the wrong project? What if I upset this customer by by doing this? Or what if I upset this other client by doing that? What if I've said, my investors, so all these doubts start to go through your head. And it's very natural, because what you want to do that natural drive within you is like, you see, where are you at right now, right now you don't have a successful business and you're not making money. So that's like point A, and then there's point B Off in the distance somewhere that you have in your mind. And that's like the dream that you have. So that's like a successful business, let's say, a million dollar business that's generating income for you. And you're loving working in and, and you've got customers that are satisfied. So that's your goal. It's like a to b. And it's like, how can I get from where I am right now, directly to B by the shortest possible route. And that's very natural, right? We want to do that without really thinking about even why that's the way that we're thinking. And we think that going the direct route, is the most efficient way. And it's the most effective way. And that is what I'm going to call the failure equals bad way of thinking. Because there if you're, if you've got this mindset that you've got a couple of years to develop your business, and you're working towards it. Anything that you do, that's taking you off track off, the track of that is something that you're going to perceive as a failure, and you're going to, you're going to, you're going to see it as negative, you're gonna judge it as it's something that is counterproductive to you. And in reality, though, the picture, the whole picture is more nuanced than that the failures that you're taking along along that route, are actually generating a lot of your ultimate success. And so it's not very empowering to think of it this way. And it's also not very realistic. A way that I like to think about it is that think about reality as being a vast possibility space, right? So there's all these different actions that you can take, that will lead to different results. You know, if you throw up, if you throw up, I throw my wallet up in the air, gravity's gonna pull it down. So that action will lead to some sort of, reaction. If, if I go and I eat unhealthy food, that action is going to lead to some sort of healthy, unhealthy reaction where I'm going to gain weight. Or if I say something mean in a relationship, then there will be consequences for that. Or if I say something loving in a relationship, there will be positive consequences for that. So there's always this vast possibility space out there, as to what you can do at any particular point, that will lead you towards a particular goal. And it's not like any of these goals have any real meaning in them in and of themselves. It all, it ultimately all boils down to what do you want. So only in respect to what you want is there meaning to the different actions you can take otherwise, you can take any action be equally happy with it, if you don't have any particular goal that you're trying to reach. However, just because you do have a goal does not mean that you need to plot out just one path to get there. A lot of times when you're undertaking something new, quite frankly, you just don't know all the variables involved. And so instead of going and trying to find that one route that will get you exactly where you want to be. What I'm proposing here is a different, a different really, my totally different mindset about it. Here, what you do is you, you take the mindset of an explorer, and what you're doing is you're trying to navigate this possibility space, and you're trying to see, what is it that works, and what is it that doesn't work, and what works in various degrees, because it's not just that something does work, or it doesn't work, it's usually not black and white, there's usually degrees to it. And not only that, there's the further nuances of what happens when you're doing shifts, how much better off you're going to be when you understand some of those other routes, right? If you will, if there's this massive maze in front of you, and you've only gone down one route of it, think about all the other opportunities that you're potentially missing. So that when that goal of yours, all of a sudden shifts, and now you need to take your business in another direction. Well, you've already been down this other route. And so you know, potential pitfalls there. And now you're better at it, you're better able to manage it. And what I suggest to you is that success ultimately boils down to this happening in your life as a whole isn't what you're doing is you're you're trying out different pathways through this giant maze, this giant network of possibilities, and you're learning you're modeling in your head, what does work and what doesn't work, what's more effective, what's less effective. And so as you do that, you develop mastery in in that particular domain, whether it's your life as a whole, maybe it's one particular aspect of life, maybe it's with fitness, maybe it's with your job, maybe was a particular sport that you want to play and you want to be good at. So whatever that is, instead of going in there and thinking, okay, how can I get from A to B, I want you to go in there and think about, Okay, I'm gonna take the pressure off of myself a little bit here, I'm not going to try to be perfect, I'm not going to try to get to the end. with utmost efficiency, what I'm gonna try to do is kind of explore around, you know, I'm going to try some things that may be a little a little crazy, maybe some things that are counterintuitive, maybe some things actually have a probability of high probability of failure. And I'm going to be okay with that. Because what I'm ultimately interested in is navigating that whole maze, getting a certain breadth to my experiences, not just depth, but breadth. And that breadth will give you more flexibility, and then ultimately, will lead to success. Because here's the thing, a lot of times you go into something new, you go down that route, and if you invest too much energy going down a certain path, and then that path ends up going, leading towards a dead end, what's going to happen? Well, you're gonna be very upset about it. Because you're gonna perceive that as being a massive failure, now, all of a sudden, you have to start that whole process over again. Whereas if you were exploring around, you're not so invested in the outcome, you're so attached to the outcome, you don't really care about getting a to b, what you care about more is like, your goal now is not getting to point B, your goal now is to explore this domain within life, and to master that domain. And I think mastery happens through a lot of failure, repeated failure. You know, there's a lot of quotes out there that say, from like, really successful people that say that a lot of their greatest successes have simply come out of their greatest failures. Or that they just simply fail. So many times, they ultimately found that one thing that did work, you know, the, the, the cliche Thomas Edison quote about how he had to go through 1000 Different materials for the filament and a light bulb before he found that one tungsten filament that did work. And so the idea there was that you don't need to look at every filament that didn't work, you don't need to be butthurt about that it didn't work. You can just say to yourself, Well, I'm just exploring, maybe this material doesn't work for a light bulb. But maybe you know what, that material might come in handy. When I'm designing something else, it will come in handy when I'm designing some other device. And so when you're doing it that way, all of a sudden, you're not so desperate to find the result. Imagine if Edison was just like, so desperate to get the light bulb to work, that he would get just totally destroyed every time he would try that filament. He'd be like, Okay, this is gotta be the one, right? And then he goes, he tries, it doesn't work. It's like, dammit. Then he goes out, he looks for desperately for another material, he tries to have material and it doesn't work. It's like, dammit, that doesn't work. And then after that, how long? Can you keep that up? Can you keep that up for 1000? iterations, kind of seems like that's not a very productive way to go about it, right? More productive ways to just kind of be chill, the less outcome dependent bit less attached to having it work, and just kind of explore, you know, well, what are the properties of this material? What are the unique properties, this material? Oh, I see, this one has good electrical conductance, and it also has good heat resistance and other properties. And then what are the properties this material? And then maybe you compare them? And you see, well, why does this material have some different properties in this one? What are what are the similarities? What are the differences, and so there, you're building a more robust understanding. And if you're an inventor, it's pretty clear how that robust understanding will ultimately pay off. Because even if the filament never works, and let's say Edison never even got the light bulb to work, he probably still would have gotten a lot of valuable traction out of having done all those experiments, and had all those failures, because he probably applied that knowledge in other areas, other inventions that he was working on. And so there you have a reason for why you want to be developing that robust understanding, right? And that robust understanding comes from doing things that don't always work. And sometimes you need that, because the other nice thing about failure is that it builds emotional leverage. This is a big one maybe even bigger than everything else we've talked about so far. Because a lot of how many times have you tried something even know how it works even know how to do it, but you just don't have like that drive that motivation to get it done? You know, Jim is a classic example or losing weight. Most people know how to lose weight most people know how to eat healthy most people know how to exercise it's just that they don't do it cuz nothing there is really forcing they don't have enough leverage on themselves. They don't have the pain of it. So what happens in that situation is that you're looking for kind of the optimal quick fix solution. Like maybe you're looking to drop some weight and so you go and you try some some kind of crazy diet that promises you a lot for a little right maybe lose 20 pounds in seven days diet, you try that one. And so you read that On some magazine, you try this at work, you failed, right? And then you go off, you try another thing, it fails, another thing, it fails, and it keeps failing, keeps failing, failing, eventually we start to realize is it's like, oh, wait a minute, the problems a little bit bigger than I originally thought it was. It wasn't simply about a diet, there's something else at play here, there's something about my mentality that's at play, maybe some beliefs that I have that are working, that I need to work on and fix those. And the reason that you start to have those realizations is in, in fact, because you had those failure, those failures in your past that now get your brain working, right, your brain tends to be lazy, doesn't want to work unless it has to. And so if that seven day 20 pound diet actually did work, then your brain would never have to figure out anything else. And your brain would never have to really go in and dig for deeper, deeper issues for deeper underlying causes. But since that diet doesn't work, and you've tried 20 of them, and you've been struggling for five years, now you're so pissed off about it, you're so frustrated about it, you're so tired with the weight, you've been struggling to lose the now it's like, okay, something's really gonna change this time. And that's usually when you start to get some real benefits, some real, some, some real action taking and some some epiphanies and insights. And that's usually when people start to change their life around is when they get that emotional leverage. And so failure can be amazing on that account. So we already talked about so many different ways that failure can be can be good for you. And I really want to emphasize that this is not just like a simple positivity thing. This is about permanently changing your mindset about how you think about failure, because even though I'm talking about all this stuff, and it sounds nice to you right now, and you're like, Yeah, you know, I probably should think about failure. He's right. Failure actually has contributed to a lot of my understanding in life. But even though I'm telling you all this stuff, it's one thing to understand that logic is another thing to actually internalize it. And to operate with this mindset. I know, because I've tried it, even though I'm talking to you about it right now, it's much easier for me to tell you that failure is good. But when I go off right now, and I go work on my business, or I go work on my relationships or something like that, I'm still going to be very much motivated by success, right? I'm never going to want to go out there and say, Yeah, you know what, I'm going to just explore the possibility space in my business here, I can lose my business. But that doesn't, that doesn't worry me, I'll just be the Explorer. And, well, I think ultimately, if you can get to that state of mind, that's where you want to be. Triggers really getting you there. So part of it just be getting starting off with awareness. I've been talking about this explore mindset. And the reason I'm talking about it, because I do have this kind of analogy that I use is you can be an explorer, or you can be the crazed gold miner, what I call and so let's contrast these cuz I think it's it's illustrative. Imagine a crazed gold miner first. So this is someone you might picture from, like, the 1850s, right? during the Gold Rush era, he's heard that there's gold somewhere in the in the mountains. And so he approached his life, and he's got these big ambitions, he thinks he's gonna strike it rich. He's gonna have a great easy life. He grabs his panties. He sits and through the mud, trying to get the gold flakes out, right. And every time he's just so he's so desperate to get that gold. Everything that shines, every little sparkle that he sees in his gold pan is like, Oh, is that a piece of gold? No. Oh, dammit. And then you're sitting somewhere sitting somewhere? Is that a piece of gold? Not dammit. And so you're doing this, this whole, this whole gold miner routine, right? And you can see kind of the desperation for the outcome there. So take that example. And now take the kind of the opposite example of the Explorer. Now when I think about the Explorer, I like to think about, let's say someone like Christopher Columbus setting off in the in like the late 14 1400s, right, he's setting off to explore new lands, uncharted territory, and I like to think of him like pulling up his ship and spotting some island off in the distance there. And then, like telling his men like, Oh, interesting, we got a new island. Let's go aboard. Let's go see what's there. And there, it's not so much that like he wants to conquer this island, or he's looking for anything specific to get from this island. It's just like, oh, this is interesting. A new land. Let's see what kind of creatures there are. Let's see what kind of trees or let's collect specimens. Let's just explore. Let's see what kind of let's see if there any humans here that we can trade with that sort of thing. Actually, as a side note, that's actually very incorrect. If you read anything about Christopher Columbus, he was obsessed with finding a shortcut. ironically finding a shortcut to the Spice Islands, because there was a problem where spices were extremely expensive in Europe. And because they have to travel through a very long trade route, like the Silk Road, etc, to get into Europe. And so really, the reason for Columbus's voyage was to find a shorter route through the sea, so that the Spanish could have better access to those spices. And so for him, actually, he was so obsessed with finding spices, that it actually destroyed his life. And it's probably actually a good example of how not to live your life has to be that obsessed about it, because he was so obsessed about it, that he almost didn't get to really relish the amazingness of his own discovery, he discovered this amazing land, but he kind of discounted all of it because he was so dead set on finding the spice route, when in fact, the spice route was meaningless, in comparison to what he ultimately found. There's a whole new continent, new vegetation, new, new human beings to interact with, to trade with new areas to expand into. And so the realities of that situation of this little analogy of the Explorer is not quite accurate with Columbus. But still I like to I like that romanticized version of Columbus, or maybe some other explorer, perhaps that just goes out and explores for exploring sake. Okay, so so we've got those two, two distinctions. Now, my question is, which of those? Do you tend to be more like? Are you like that crazed gold miner in whatever it is that you're pursuing? Or are you more like Columbus or some explorer, that's just exploring for explore sake. And this can be in your business, this could be in your career, this can be in any kind of hobby or activity that you're trying to master and get better at, whether it's a sport, some sort of craft or an art that you're doing, it can be in your relationships, it can be with, with fitness, and nutrition, can be with your health. So really any aspect of your life and then of course, your life as a whole as well. So what I would suggest is that adopting the Explorer mindset is going to be much more fruitful for you, in the long run, you're actually going to get more value out of it. And that's counterintuitive, right? Because you would think that if you were so focused on the results, that you would get there faster, and you'd have, you'd have more. But the problem there, as we already discussed, there are several problems, there's emotional problems, you might burn out doing it that way, you're also being very harsh on yourself. So you're creating a lot of internal resistance and struggle, over the long run, if you're that, if you're that kind of blind, and blood thirsty for results. Whereas with the Explorer mindset, what you get is you get a lot of benefits. First of all, you get deep robust understanding, you also get the joy of doing exploration, which is, I think, will tend to be a more kind of a, a flowy in the flow in the moment more present type of activity. And it feeds into that that natural curiosity that humans have. So just be naturally curious about what it is that you're trying to master and get good at, there's that you'll stick a lot of pressure off yourself, because you don't have to be perfect anymore. You don't have to get it right the first time. It gives you a lot of perseverance. And it gives you the sense that you're going to succeed no matter what. So you see a lot of courage. Because your goal now is not to get one particular facet correct, or one particular path Correct. Your goal is now to explore and to understand a domain. And this can be big, I think, especially starting a business is a really good example. Because, you know, I started my my first online business when I was like, I think it was 24. So that was about four years ago. And I knew nothing really about business. There's some stuff that I just knew from pop culture and from some of the books that I read, but I really didn't know much about business. And I kind of went in there weighing the whole thing. And I was I was kind of desperate for results. And I really wanted stuff to work. And I was really focused on getting that one business to work. And part of the problem that I see there is that first of all, there is a lack of understanding, if you're trying to go into a new domain, you just don't know what the right moves are. So you can't be too worried about making the wrong move. And so that's the problem with the gold miner mindset is that every move is either perfect, or it's not. And usually it's the case that you feel that most of the moves that you're making are not working. And so what you do is you agonize about it, like this, this step that I take get me further to point B No. How about this one? How about this one? How about this one? And it's like stuffs not working and so you're butthurt about it. Whereas, if you're starting a new business, what you want to do is you actually want to kind of suss things out Do little tests here and there, see what does work, see what doesn't work, see what the opportunities are. Because that's the thing, when you're exploring a lot of times you discover stuff by accident, through, let's say, a process of serendipity, where you're just exploring, you're exploring somewhere charted land, and then all of a sudden, you discover that there's some precious natural resource there, maybe, maybe you didn't even know about, right, how many natural resources existed in America, that were even unheard of, before, it was fully explored, you know, fruits and vegetables, and nuts and spices and herbs, that that weren't present in the old world that were then later exploited, or new civil of ancient civilizations. So all this kind of stuff, that there's no way Columbus could have anticipated any of that. But what is important is that if you're an explorer, and you're willing to take new information and new discoveries in, then you can capitalize on those, right? So if you're starting a new business, and let's say originally, you have some idea that you're going to start it this way, and you're gonna go into this aspect of the business, you're gonna go into this niche, you're going to, you're going to make your marketing like this, you go out there, and you actually try it. And then you realize, whoa, I was totally wrong there. The markets just not responding. So you got to be you got to be agile enough to to adjust and say, Okay, well, the markets not responding to this type of message. But I'm noticing that it's responding to this little piece of my message. What if I take that little piece now and I blow it up, and I make a whole business around that, that's going to require me to change everything I've done up to this point. But if I do that, I'll have something real, something that's really valuable. And I could have never foreseen that that connection would have been there. And so you can only spot that if you've got the Explorer mindset. If you're very closed minded, and just focused on one thing, then you're going to tend to only find the things that validate or invalidate that thing, you're going to miss all the other opportunities around you. So that is a good one for business, I think, especially if you're new to some domain. So if you're new to a sport, if you're new to a business, if you've never run a business before, go ahead there and get out there. And don't be afraid to make the mistakes, because those mistakes will then inform you what to do in the future. Also, when you're thinking long term, more of that explorer mindset, you're gonna be thinking more long term. It's not just about getting this one business, operating and creating income. It's more about how do I become a good entrepreneur? How to become a good businessman? And what does that mean? Well, a good businessman is not one person that just started one business, and figured out how to do something in one particular niche. That's success. But that's a certain fragile type of success, which I want to contrast with robust success you get when you actually navigate more of those pathways, and you get a deeper understanding. So in the case of business, if I'm a good entrepreneur and a good businessman, probably what I've done is I've started multiple businesses. And probably if you look at their history of serial entrepreneurs that have been very successful, they usually start off starting businesses that that tank, and they might start 510 different businesses that just don't work. And they've tried businesses, this in this type of industry and that type of industry, they try so many different things, that they get a good, robust understanding, before they get their success. And then only then after they have that understanding, do they find that one route, and then they really build on that, and then they get something solid? So that's like a good businessman. And in that case, that businessman, instead of focusing on getting one business to work, he should be more thinking about, well, how do I become a good businessman, that probably means that I need to be more broad in my, in my, in my actions, more broad in my way of thinking about things. And then when he's thinking that way, he's not so upset with one of his businesses fails, he's not tearing his hair out, he's not jumping out of the 20 story window. Because he realized that that's a that's just one piece of the larger puzzle that's like a battle and a whole war. And one battle is not necessarily defining the whole war. So seeing the really big picture can be important there. Whereas if, if you've got that one person that started a business, and let's say you started a business, and you know nothing about business, and you just lucked out, you just happen to luck out, you chose the right niche. You chose the right marketing message, you found the right customers, stuff just clicked into place for you, and bam, you got a nice business going. And now you're kind of enjoying the fruits of that labor. That's great. And if you can make that happen. Awesome. But I think that you'll realize that even if you get into that position, it's not as envious as it seems. Because here's the problem is it's a fragile success. What can happen is that you're going to be sitting there on top of this thriving business. But deep down, you're going to know that there was a pretty big element of luck there for you to get to where you're at right now. And And deep down, you know that if this business tanked, you'd be screwed because you think back and you think at all the serendipitous events that had to happen for you to get to where you're at, and maybe some of the lucky stuff that had to happen. And the fact that you don't really understand what it takes to create a business from scratch, in a tough environment, where odds are against you, in that kind of situation, even if you're sitting on a good business, you're gonna be afraid that you're gonna lose it. And that is going to mean that you're going to be insecure. And it actually will probably start to lead to behaviors that start to create a self fulfilling prophecy effect, where you're so worried about losing your business, that you start behaving in irrational ways in paranoid ways that actually sabotage the business and RIA crumbling down. And then once that happens, you're screwed, because you don't have the knowledge to build a backup, because you haven't really taken the time to explore the full possibility space, you've only just explored that one path. And so you only know one little facet of a very much larger domain. So think about the kind of success that you're building in your life, are you building a fragile kind of success or robust kind of success? Chances are, if you're very focused on success, and you think that failure is bad, then you're building something fragile. And if you're tolerant of failure, and you're willing to accept this gives you some time to go build it on a deep understanding a good mental model of of what you're trying to master, then you're, you're going to be much more confident, you can be much more grounded, that success is going to be grounded in something. And you're always going to know that you can go back and rebuild it even if something slips up. And you're also so used to failure, because that's just, that's just your de facto way that you're that you're operating, that you fail so many times that really failure is not a big concern for you. I think a lot of times when people get into something new, they worry, they have this fear of making mistakes. So you know, it can go from simple things that you do in your life to big things. If you're starting a business, and you really are worried about failure, then you're you're going to be second guessing every move that you're making. Because you're going to wonder, well, if I do this, well, something horrible happened. If I do that, well, something horrible happened. If you're even doing something simple, let's say you're just cooking a meal, and you just got into cooking, and you want to become a better chef. Oh, one way to think about it is like, well, I have this recipe, I want to execute it perfectly. So I don't burn anything. I want to cut all the all the vegetables and meat up properly. I want to cook everything properly, I want to season everything properly. So everything is just spot on. And then I'm going to deliver this beautiful dish to somebody, and it's going to be great. So there's that way. And then there's the other way where it's like, you know what, I'm just gonna throw all these ingredients together and just see what happens. You know, what happens if I bake it at a slightly higher temperature? What happens if I put some different spice in there? What happens if I substitute that with this? And you try it out? And you know what? Maybe it goes horribly bad. Maybe you come up with something that's totally inedible. But that's all right. Because you have to ask yourself, what is the cost there? And what kind of game are you playing? Are you playing a short term game or a long term game, because what ends up happening is if you just make that one recipe by the book, and all you know how to do is just make that one recipe, sure, you might get it right. But you're not going to learn the deeper skill of cooking, and you're not going to learn all the principles involved, you're not gonna be able to dissect that recipe as you would, if you spent your time experimenting. Because we've spent your time experimenting, you're gonna start to develop models in your head as to what works and what doesn't work, what flavor combinations can go well together, you know, what cooking techniques are the best for certain types of food and not so good for others, et cetera, et cetera. And eventually, if you follow this more experimental route that I'm advocating, you're probably going to become a really good chef. Whereas if you only know a couple of recipes, you're going to be quite limited, even though maybe you're able to pop one or two out here for some important occasion. So keep that in mind. And think about how afraid Are you of making mistakes in your life? And, of course, there is a caveat here, I don't want to say that you should always focus on failure, and that any kind of failure should be equally tolerated. I think there's different types of failure right? So you have to be smart, and you have to analyze which failures are low cost, and high return and which failures are low return, but very high cost. Let's take an example. Good example. You know, if we're, if I'm learning to do something in a computer program, let's say I'm learning Photoshop, if I open it the first time, there's this tendency to probably be scared to start drawing on the canvas using different tools because it's like, well, what if this tool screws up Yup, I can't reverse it. That's a scenario where you've got pretty low cost. Worst case scenario, you screw up a canvas, you can just start a new one, maybe have a nice picture that you made in the, you're afraid to use some brush on it, because you think it's gonna make it ugly. And so maybe you screw up one canvas, one picture, that is definitely a cost. But the return, there's so much more, right, by being able to experiment with different brushes, you're going to, you're going to learn how they work and the principles behind them much more quickly. So that's probably a case where it's totally okay to go out there and make a bunch of mistakes without worrying that you're making mistakes. And you know, that probably, I would say, would apply to cooking as well. If you're cooking a meal, what is the cost of cooking a real meal? Well, the worst case scenario with cooking a bad meal is probably that you're going to, unless you, you make something so horrible that it poisons somebody, and they have a heart attack short of that, it's probably going to be that you're just going to make something inedible, so that doesn't taste very good. And so that's why maybe you spend 1020 bucks cooking a meal that you're gonna throw in the garbage can because it's just inedible. Whereas the benefits you're getting, you're getting all the experience of how cooking works. So there again, is another case where the, the experience you're getting, is really worth the cost of losing a couple of meals here there. How about going and placing your life savings on a roulette table? Well, that's probably a case where the cost is not justifying the experience that you're getting for it. Right, that life savings probably took you decades to build up, you can do a lot of good stuff for yourself using that money, you don't want to go out there and blow it in one go. Although actually I can make a case for where that might be useful for some individuals. If you've got a gambling addiction, then maybe that's actually something that would be important for you is you might need that kind of the emotional leverage that comes from having a catastrophic life failure like that, like losing all your money, so that you never do it again, when you actually gain more money in the future might actually be a really good way to get yourself off on gambling addiction, not to say that you do that consciously, that tends to usually happen unconsciously. Because these things are so painful, we basically don't have the willpower to inflict it on ourselves. But that's a case where you want to, to not go for failure, you want to take calculated, calculated decision to make calculated decisions, and really look at how damaging is the failure ultimately going to be for you. In fact, what I'm going to suggest next is that the ultimate approach is to actually proactively go out there and look for failure. Now, this can seem a little bit crazy. But again, keeping in mind that you're looking for a specific type of strategic failure, you're failing in special ways that get you a lot of reference experiences that are very valuable, but don't cost you a lot in terms of money or energy or time. So we just talked about I just mentioned reference experiences, this is an important word because this is really something that really ties in with this whole notion of failing and getting understanding what is the reference experience a reference experience is basically any experience. So any experience qualifies. But a reference experience is something that's especially poignant, that shows you some specific aspects of reality that, that you now understand how it works, because you got that experience. So let's say you think that gambling isn't very, the is a very dangerous, so what you go out there, and you think the gamble is a good way to make money. If you've got that mindset, and you go out there and you put your life savings on the roulette table on black, and it comes out red and you lose all your money. And then you're just totally emotionally devastated by that experience. Well, that right? There is a reference experience, right? Because that's some emotionally charged little fact about the world that you went through in your past, that now tells you never to do it again, if you do that once, chances are, you're probably never going to do that, again. Some people do, it just depends on how stubborn you are. Sometimes we have to keep hitting our head against the wall until we really learned the lesson. And I would submit to you that most of the hard won lessons that you have in your own life, stuff that you that has made you prudent and wise has come out of reference experiences similar to that maybe not that severe, although maybe even more severe. So more severe events might include like an epiphany you have with a near death experience. Or maybe you had some you were just very sick. And all of a sudden you started to rethink how your life was going. Right? So you got some emotional leverage from that experience. Or maybe maybe you did something that you deeply regret in a relationship or something else and all of a sudden you use that to build up a deeper understanding. To build up emotional leverage to then basically what you're doing is you're telling your mind and your body never To to skew your, your behavior in that direction, it's always going to skew it the opposite direction. And sometimes it takes multiple reference experiences to get our behavior to go just the way we want it. Because sometimes what you'll do is you get one negative experience here, and then you swing your pendulum totally to the other side, then you gotta, then then you start getting problems, because you're swinging so far to this side, that you decide to swing at the other side, the wind is coming up, and let's say we had a thunderstorm coming in. So that's why we go rustling in the winds. But that is, that's basically what reference experiences are. And the reason they're important is that I think that the more reference experiences you have, the more successful you're going to be in your life. And of course, this means you want to get reference experiences that are specific to the thing they want to get good at, but also reference experiences for life in general. And the model I'm proposing, here's go out there and proactively seek reference experiences. So if you can fail in a way, that will get you a lot of understanding and not cost you a lot. Go ahead and do that, you know, if you want to get good at poker, maybe you should go out there and, and spend like, set aside $1,000 Go out there and play a bunch of tournaments fail, but you tend to lose that $1,000. But then what do you get that $1,000, you probably going to learn a lot of valuable knowledge about how to play poker, etc, etc. So that later in the future, if you ever decide to play poker, you're much wiser you know, all the pitfalls, you know, the pains, without having sacrificed too much for it. Same thing goes with business, try different things in your business to see what is working and what's not working. Businesses a little bit trickier, because a lot of times business can have high risk, high cost, mistakes. So obviously, you want to try to avoid those as much as possible. But where you can try to play around with it get into a playful explorer type of mindset. And now let's see I have I have all this stuff talked about down below in the article in more detail. And I just want to make sure because there's so much in the article. It's like a 3000 word article that I covered most of the points here. So I'm kind of looking at my notes. So I did cover this idea of failing on purpose, I think it's hard to actually internalize this mindset. But a few tips on how to do it, I think what you want to do is you want to personal develop awareness, you get that just by watching this video. Once you've got that awareness. Next time you sit down and you're doing some sort of task, start to recognize for those moments where you're afraid to make a decision, or you're afraid to make a mistake. And when you recognize that, then try to analyze and really ask yourself, how costly is this mistake? And if you see that the mistake is not so costly, then what you got to do is you got to start reprogramming yourself, you just got to say, You know what, why don't I go and just Just try it. So what it's gonna fail, but it doesn't cost me anything, I'll just learn something, you know, just for the sake of doing it. And just do it like that, do it once, then the next day, do it twice, then do it again and do it again. And slowly over time, you'll start to internalist internalize this idea where your mind will start to say, You know what, I like this explorer mindset, it's fun, I'm discovering new things, I'm getting a lot more understanding, it's not as dangerous, I thought it was going to be. And so that now becomes your, your way of working through through certain things in the way of understanding of mastering, that can be a very powerful shift to make challenging one to make for sure that's something you want to practice and turn into a habit and be prudent about which way you use it. And so you don't make those stupid, very high cost mistakes, right. And one example of this, that I can, that I can throw out there, that the way that I used it most recently is I was going through my coaching program, right? I went through a life coaching program where it was like eight months of coaching that I did. And I would get instruction from from other coaches on how to coach like in the classroom instruction, and take notes and lectures and read books, and then I would go out there and I would have to coach other people. And I would coach people that were in the program, peers, etc, my friends, just to really get my skills up. And when I first started this, and a lot of other coaches that were in the program with me, there's this natural tendency to kind of be afraid you're given different techniques or different given different questions to ask, you can guide the coaching session in so many different ways. So when you get on that call, and you've never coached anyone before and you start off, it's like, well, what question is the best question to ask. And you know, you're coming from a good from a good place, you want to help that person solve their problem. So you're so focused on solving that problem, that you're not really focused about learning how to coach, you're more focused on just getting the results of that short term result rather than the long term result of becoming a good coach. And so I noticed this in myself and I and I thought, You know what, we aren't just training these are not paying clients. So I do have the liberty to go out there and try different techniques. And when I started getting this shift, every time before I would get on a coaching call, I would tell myself like, you know what? Don't worry so much about fixing the guy's problem right now. Why don't you ask them some questions that you haven't asked before, just to see if those kinds of questions are effective or not? Why don't you try this technique that you read from Tony Robbins? Why don't you try to try this technique that you think might be effective? Why don't you try this other technique that you actually have been told not to use by your instructors? They told you not to use it. But why don't you do it anyways, just to prove it to yourself, that it doesn't work. Or maybe you'll prove that it does work and that they were wrong. Or maybe you'll just understand why it doesn't work. And that y is going to then be powerful. And it's going to help you make other realizations about this domain of coaching. And so I did, I went through this process, I gave myself some, some leeway to ask questions that weren't perfect. And just playing around with things. And I felt like I started getting into my groove. And ironically, I probably helped those people more in the long run. Because with coaching, it's funny, it's like, if you're, if you're very dead set on getting to some to some objective, before you even know all the details along the path, then you're probably going to, you're probably going to guide the client someplace that's not very organic for them. And that's not going to work for them, it's going to look like it's a solution just on the surface. So it's better to be kind of in the flow and go with it and try different things. Get responses, there's always ways to turn things around. If you ask a bad question, or something doesn't quite resonate with the client, you can always flip it around. And there's always another session to, to prove that. So basically, I went through this process for about eight months. And ultimately, what happened is that by trying this stuff, and deliberately failing in certain areas, I developed a really good understanding, and nice confidence and I solid, stable confidence. So now when I'm on the phone with somebody, like I'm excited, I've got all my different resources at hand, I've already asked all these different questions. So I'm not worried about asking the wrong question, because I probably already asked it of somebody, and I know how to flip things around, I'm not worried about doing anything too wrong. And ultimately, that that makes it even better, right, that makes me a better coach. Because now I have that confidence to bring into it, that confidence transfers onto the client, my enthusiasm transfers on to the, to the client, all the different things that all the mistakes I've made in the past, I've got those recorded in my mind. So I know not to make those mistakes with this new client that I have. And so now, I've developed some sort of proficiency, some sort of mastery in this in this topic. And and that's what I continue to do. You know, I'm always learning from new clients, I love doing that. It's part of why I love coaching is that not only do I get to help people, but I get to learn about how to help people, I get to learn about how to help myself. So it all comes together. It's just like an awesome synergy. But that's, that's a really nice example, I think that I want to share with you. Because think about how that that kind of approach can work in your life. Where are you right now really put a lot of pressure on yourself a lot of force and a lot of fear to not make mistakes. What would happen if you just kind of let that go. Take the Explore mindset and shift from a failure equals bad to a failure equals good mindset. All right, this is it, Leo signing off for actualised.org