Fail frequently

What looks like talent is often just tolerance for failure.

"Failure is the information you need to get where you’re going."

—Rick Rubin

There was a kid who sat in front of me in 5th grade. He went on to be valedictorian of our high school, then got an econ degree from the University of Chicago.

“Failure is data,” he would say.

I’m not sure when he first said this. I don’t think it was in 5th grade, but I dunno maybe he’s pretty damn smart.

But he also got married and then later got divorced, so how smart is he?

Pretty damn smart because he’s now re-married with a child. When it wasn’t working, he didn’t hesitate. He got out.

He’s one of the quickest decision-makers I’ve ever met. Why? Because he doesn’t carry all the baggage most of us—myself included—attach to failure. He just makes a choice, sees if it gets him closer or further to his goal, makes a tweak, and then does it again.

He experiments. Fails. Tries something else.

Which reminds me of an experience where failure is so normalized that we don’t even blink.

Video games.

You’re playing Mario. You move right and run into a Goomba—dead. You try something else. Jump!—alive. You fail enough times and you eventually make it to the end of the level. But imagine if you ran into that Goomba and were like, “well, I failed, guess it’s time to try cooking,” or whatever and you just walked away.

There are people that play life both ways. But we both know you want to get to the end of the level. Even when life is hard and scary and filled with Goombas. I’m pretty sure this reference is hot again now that Mario is a major movie franchise? No idea.

So why is failure in life so much harder?

Why do we all know failure is essential to success and we still rationalize ways to avoid it?

Because it feels like shit. It’s 10:18pm on Monday night as I write this and this feels like shit. This post feels a bit hack and vague, definitely lacking proper actionable steps. It’s as if I can feel the failure of me trying to convey my ideas as I literally try to convey them.

But wait a second, what is “feeling the failure”? What does that look like?

I’m afraid that you’re reading this and thinking to yourself:

• I know all of this already

• This isn’t new information

• This isn’t funny

• This isn’t insightful

• Maybe you should stick to editing films instead of pawning off your secondhand self-help bullshit

“Feeling the failure” looks like imagining people reading my work and thinking it’s garbage. So really, when we say we’re “afraid to fail” what we really mean is we’re “afraid of what people will think of us if our work is garbage.”

Fortunately, I have a solution to this fear.

Get the fuck over it.

And here’s how: understand that the people we’re afraid of aren’t creators.

They’re critics.

They’re our mom or dad or sister or neighbor or best friend who all have a fancy purse packed full of opinions. But you know what that purse doesn’t have?

A single fucking executable idea.

Ask yourself, do you actually respect these people?

No.

You don’t.

True artists are aware when criticism comes from those sitting on the sidelines, not brave enough to step into the arena and create themselves. Critical commentary rarely comes from tastemakers. It comes from those who have traded their artistic souls in for a career where they make an amount of money that puts fancy food on the table but somehow never feeds the soul.

We’ll all be dead soon, so we might as well ignore them and move the fuck on and realize that every success stands on the shoulders of failure.

This post might suck.

That’s kinda the point.