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June 5, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
20:16
1382 In Praise of Failure

Learning to love failure is the essence of happiness.

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I hope that you're doing very well. This is a little bit more of a personal show about failure and life and death, really.
This came up On the weekend, a young man was at the barbecue, and he's just made the transition from low-rent Starbucks slash waitering to being an entrepreneur in the realm of writing for people, and send him work if you can.
He's very good. And he's going through all of the stresses and strains of fearing failure, right?
Because every time we want something in our life, with the desire comes the fear.
And in many ways, we can measure the desire that we have in accordance with the fears that we're feeling.
So for instance, when I go to see ballet, I'm not particularly burning with fear, lust, and desire to become a ballerina or a male ballerina.
Because I have the rhythm sense of a slab of sidewalk and the flexibility of an oak tree.
I don't feel this yearning-burning desire to do that.
When I first began to see the glimmerings of being able to move from software management to this crazy philosophy job, I felt this Yearning burning hunger to do it because I really really wanted to do it I felt it was the best thing I could conceivably do with my life there was enough enthusiasm I never charged for anything and then people and I still don't but people and I didn't even accept donations for the first I don't know six or eight months until people started wanting to donate and then that's how it sort of came about that I was able to do this crazy job for a living But the moment I thought it was possible that I could do it for a living,
and it took quite some time to get there, I began to really feel this desire and this terror, right, that it was not going to be possible.
And so in the presence of that which we most desire, we feel both Need or want and fear, right?
That we're either not going to achieve it or we're going to, in some ways, which is even worse, we're going to achieve it and then it's going to go away and we're going to have to go back to a life which formerly was pleasant and now feels...
You know, kind of less, right?
Because we're not doing that, which we most want to do.
So, desire is very much associated with fear.
And the Buddhist, of course, would have you deny both, which I think is to stop breathing for the sake of a possible cough.
But we'll get into that another time, perhaps.
So this young man was feeling this really great desire to do this writing for hire, but at the same time he was feeling this great terror that it wasn't going to work and so on.
So I shared some thoughts at the barbecue and I thought I would put them here too because I think it's something which we all go through continually.
The moment that you are attracted to a woman or a man or somewhere in between, The moment you are attracted to someone, you feel desire, and then you want to go and ask her out, and then you feel a fear that she is going to reject you.
So you see desire and fear are one and the same thing, and then that's really how it should be.
You can't want something without feeling that your life will be less if you don't get it, so fear and desire are one and the same.
However, there is something I think that's really important to understand in the realm of hope, ambition, and desire, which is the question of failure.
And failure is something which...
Very often our entire self-esteem hangs upon for no particular rhyme or reason, right?
So we go and ask a woman out, and she says no, and then we feel like, oh my god, I'm bad, I'm terrible, I'm not attractive, I'm never going to get the person I want, and so we escalate.
Beyond all reason, beyond all empiricism, failure.
And so I'm going to make the case for failure, because I think that it's really, really important to become very much gropey, almost reach around friends with failure.
So this is the case for failure and I hope that it will liberate you from some of these fears.
When I was an entrepreneur, starting out, co-founded a software company, and I was on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars of loans and payroll and so on, and a couple of times we were like, you know, within days of shutting down before we got an order, there was a lot of stress and a lot of fear.
It was my first software venture and my first business ownership venture, my first time as a manager, my first time as a salesman, my first time as a lead developer, and so it was scary stuff.
And one of the things that we came to, and I think it was very useful, I know it was very useful for us and I'll share it with you, was this.
When it comes to success and failure, there's a certain amount that is within your control.
And there's a whole lot...
That's not. And knowing the difference between the two is really important.
So I could write great software, I could do great presentations, or I could try to.
I could get up at 4 a.m.
to catch a flight. I could go visit five cities in three days.
I could present at conferences.
I could, you know, do my best to manage and motivate a team of developers.
I could do all of that stuff.
And so some of that was within my control.
But of course a whole bunch of it wasn't.
We had stuff going on as a lot of business people did around 9-11 and then stuff cratered.
We had stuff going on with particular companies who then would face a spending freeze because of problems in their business.
You would develop an association with someone who then might leave or quit or get fired.
And you have to start all over again.
Budget might be approved and then the budget might be lost for whatever reason.
There's lots of stuff that was completely outside of our control.
So I would do my best and then see.
And Worry or fear or anxiety was helpful, right?
Because it's the bell curve, right? A small amount of worry or concern or fear or anxiety is good because it motivates you, it gets your adrenals pumping, it gets your cortisol going, it sharpens your perceptions and your thoughts.
But too much, and it becomes a paralytic and not really something that is productive and helpful.
So recognizing that I had control over some of the variables, but probably only a minority of the variables, all things considered.
That was really...
I didn't have control over whether other competitors came into the field.
I didn't have control whether, say, Microsoft would decide to come into the field and, you know, blow us all away like a gnat on a windshield.
So, recognizing what I had control over, focusing my energies and intentions on that, and basically just trying to push aside all the rest of the stuff.
So, I did not take ownership for things beyond my control.
Because that is really the worst aspect of stress.
When you try to manage things that you can't control.
You're going to get married and...
Storm clouds are gathering in the sky and you get all kinds of stress.
And it's like, well, either you're going to get married in the rain or you're going to get married in the non-rain.
You can be curious about that.
You can have a preference, not that it really matters because the storm clouds are going to do what they're going to do.
So that to me was very, very important.
The other aspect that was even more important than that was this idea that once I'm responsible for that which I have control over, Then I've done the best I can, and it's sort of out of my hands, right?
It's really out of your hands.
And what was really important for me then was to recognize that I was either going to succeed or I was going to fail, or we as a company were going to succeed or we were going to fail.
And I had done everything that I reasonably could to ensure a positive outcome, and then, you know, the fate gods do their combat and spit out something from some orifice that is going to be the result.
And what I really, really hung on to, like grim life during my years as a Chief Technical Officer, was that I may succeed or I may fail, but the real failure, the real failure, the one that is really under my control, It's whether I have a good time or a bad time on my path to success or failure.
That, to me, was the real definition of success.
Do the best I could.
Put up a good fight.
But then, when events unfolded as they did...
For the majority of variables outside my control, for me the definition of success was not, did I get the contract?
Because you can work for 3, 6, 9, 12 months in consultative software sales to get a contract.
The moment you get the contract, you're happy for a day or two, right?
So let's say it was a year.
I didn't want 363 days to be, oh, I'm going to get the contract, and then, you know, two days to be happy.
That's not a good proportion, right?
What I did want to do, though, was to make sure that I enjoyed The journey towards success or failure.
And if I wasn't enjoying it, that was the real failure.
And it didn't have to wait until I did or didn't get the contract for me to experience success or failure.
That was really important to me.
Like, you're going to either succeed or you're going to fail.
But for heaven's sakes, don't have a bad, stressful, negative, worrisome time on your journey towards success or failure because then you've already failed.
You've already failed.
Because failure, failure is the essence and the vast majority of life, right?
So it's well estimated that to get one consultative software sale, you have to make a thousand cold calls, which will result in a hundred callbacks, which will result in ten meetings, which will result in one sale.
Right? One in a thousand contacts results in a sale.
That's batting one, right?
That is a very large failure rate.
And think of all the code, if you're a coder, think of all the code that you write before you get something that compiles efficiently and works and meets spec and so on.
Think of all the relationships that you've had before you meet the love of your life, if you have or haven't yet, right?
Right? I mean, are they all failures?
Well, no, but they certainly aren't failures.
Let's say they are failures in the degree to which they have led to a lifelong, passionate love affair, right?
Think of all the websites you visit versus the number of ones that you bookmark, right?
Think of the number of products you look at in a catalog as you flip through versus the number that you buy.
Well, everybody desperately wants you to buy their product and you're just, you know, flipping past it, right?
So I think that's really, really important to understand that failure is absolutely the vast majority of life.
And if you don't make friends with failure and enjoy the journey to whatever you define as success or failure, then you really have no chance for happiness in this life, right?
If you hang your joy on, as some tennis player said, the thrill of victory, which really lasts about 15 minutes, then the vast majority of your life is spent in anticipation of success or failure, worrying about success and failure, rather than enjoying, Whatever it is that you're on the journey towards success or failure.
Recognizing that failure is really, really core and central and you have to make friends with it if you're going to have any kind of happy or satisfied life.
Let me make another case too, which is the case from Genius.
If we look at the most brain-spanning geniuses in history and look at their success rates, and again, this is just off the cuff, so I haven't done huge amounts of research because there is a lot that is subjective about this.
But look at Shakespeare, you know, wrote dozens and dozens of plays of which may be...
You know, four, six, eight, maybe ten, are considered to be great.
And even within those plays, there are things which are considered not particularly great and which aren't particularly logical.
He's got anachronisms and all this kind of stuff as well.
So for Shakespeare, you know, the best writer in the history of the planet, His success rate is about 20-25%.
Think of Charles Dickens.
Wrote dozens and dozens of novels.
The ones which are regularly read are considered classics.
Maybe 7, maybe 10.
Again, 20-25% success rate, even for the greatest geniuses in the history of the world.
Einstein, you know, what were his contributions after his mid-twenties?
Well, an endless mad pursuit of the unified field theory, which was a massive fail, right?
So, a success for a couple of years when he was working as a patent clerk, and then, you know, very large failures for the rest of his life.
Paul McCartney, post-RAM, post-1970s, Where is the success rate there, right?
So look at even the greatest and most wonderful musicians.
Look at the success rate of stuff which is regularly performed relative to everything that they wrote.
Look at playwrights.
Edward Albury. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
And what?
Right? Look at Tennessee Williams, the big two, right?
You've got The Glass Menagerie, you've got A Streetcar Named Desire, a few others, but the vast majority, including a novel that he wrote, you know, completely forgotten, washed away by the tides of history, Eugene O'Neill.
Have you ever heard of a play called The Hairy Ape?
Well, no, of course not, because that was a massive fail on his part.
He is known for, what, Desire Under the Elms, A Long Day's Journey Into Night, you know, maybe a couple more.
Sam Shepard. Look at his plays, the vast majority of which are completely forgotten.
Noel Coward. You get the idea.
You can go on and look at novelists, right?
Look at George Orwell, right?
You've got 1984, you've got Animal Farm.
Maybe Down and Out in Paris and London, which is a really great read.
You should have a look. But the vast majority of his output completely vanished.
I'm not completely vanished, but you understand, I'm not sort of part of what, although the writing is beautiful for the most part, he's a fantastic writer.
So, I just sort of want to point out that there is a peak of creativity, there's a peak and focus of creativity, even for the most brain-spanning geniuses, even for the most creative souls on the planet.
The vast majority, if not the vast majority of what they produce, it does not make it into the Western canon, right?
Does not make it into the permanent repertoire of the highest culture.
So even if you're a complete genius, then you have a success rate of 20 to 25 percent if you're lucky.
And for most of the people, it is much lower than that, right?
So, that is something to really recognize.
That even if you were the very conceivably best ever in your profession, you would still spend the majority of your life not succeeding relative to your highest standards, relative to that which you know you could achieve.
So, I think that's another really important thing to remember and to understand.
Failure is absolutely core to life.
If you can't make friends with it, you can't...
If you can't enjoy it, right?
I'm either going to hit the wall or I'm either going to...
I'm on a plane. I'm either going to clear those trees or I'm not going to clear those trees.
But the important thing is to have a good time and to enjoy the process of aiming at success or failure and have some investment in the outcome.
But for heaven's sake, don't hang your self-esteem on that which is outside your control.
So I may succeed, I may fail, but I'll be damned if I'll have a bad time on the journey.
Because that to me would be the greatest failure of all and a complete and total tragedy.
And really that is a kind of waste of life.
And that is a real kind of shame.
Think of an Olympic athlete.
Right? You finally get that 100-meter dash.
You got 10, what, 9, 10, 11, 12 seconds.
But, of course, you've had, you know, 10, 15, 20 years of training ahead of time.
It can't all come down to that race.
Now, the last thing that I mentioned about failure I think is really important.
And this, let's keep it...
I always put the good stuff in at the end.
But remember that...
Failure in life is completely inevitable.
It's inevitable because we are biological organisms who, after the age of 20 or 25, begin to decline inexorably.
Our metabolism slows by 10% a year.
We age. We get wrinkles.
I may lose my hair at some point.
I mean by that, of course, ear and nose hair.
But we are inevitable, slow-falling-off-the-cliff biological decaying organisms, right?
The roots are like trees hanging on the side of a cliff.
The roots are constantly being eroded, and eventually we fall away to the black rocks of death.
So if you're going to pin your life on success, it's really hard to reconcile that with the inevitable decay.
And slowing down and creaky joints and rheumatism and heart attacks and cancers and so on, which snatch us all, right?
Like the skyhooks of the passing death planes are constantly snatching empty spots in the crowd.
And one day you will be that.
I mean, every time I see...
Well, not every time. Most times I see an ambulance going past, I think, you know, one day...
And it may be my last day or certainly will be close to it.
One day I will be in that ambulance and there will be no taking me back to the house because I'm gonna be thrown in a hole in the ground and they're gonna toss some dirt on my face and there'll be a tombstone and my story will be told.
And that is the inevitable consequence of being alive.
And as Galileo said, we should, in a sense, be very happy that death exists, because if death did not exist, then we would not need birth, and therefore we would not be alive.
Dying is the very price of life, because there is no life for us.
If there had been no death prior, we'd all be infertile elves or something.
So I think that's really important to recognize and understand as well, that the inevitable decay in life...
I mean, I originally used to look like this, and now I look like this.
The inevitable decay in life is really, really important to understand.
Failure is the essence of life, because if there was no failure in life, if there was no decline in death in life, there would be no need for birth and we would not exist.
So life is the sweet wine that comes from the ashes of prior extinction.
Since we're all going to get old, and that's the best we can hope for, right?
The only thing worse than not getting old is the alternative.
We're all going to get old.
We're all going to decline. We're all going to fail.
We're all going to end up peeing ourselves and crapping ourselves, and we're all going to end up being unable to walk stuck in a bed, riddled with whatever illness or disease is going to take us out.
So if you can't make friends with failure and life is inexorable failure, then it's really hard to see how you can enjoy the second half of your life.
And so I would really recommend making significant friends with failure, enjoying the process that leads towards success and failure.
Recognize that the vast majority of life is failure and it doesn't matter where you end up.
It doesn't matter how hard you hit the wall or whether you go over the wall, whether you clear the trees or not.
It only matters your commitment to the joy in the moment.
Because if we can't accept the joy in the moment, the inconstant, vague solar flare fragments of occasional successes is a really, really pitiful way.
Like a man crawling across a desert between the occasional and hoped-for oasis, which eventually decline into nothing but dry sand.
And an over-bright death overhead.
If we can't enjoy the actual process of life, but instead hang our happiness on the success or failure of things which we have only very partial control over, we really are failing in the worst possible way and giving up on the greatest joys in life, which is an absolute pleasure in the moment.
Thank you so much for watching.
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