October 20, 2025 • 38 mins
We think of failure as a terrible thing or something to be avoided. But when you learn to fall in love with failure, a whole new level of growth occurs that will have you seeing progress faster than ever. In our 20s, the so called failure-decade, we talk about how you can learn to fail, including:
- The reasons we fear failure
- Why our definition of success is inaccurate and socially conditioned
- The relationship successful people have with success
- Why grit matters more than IQ
- Why your fear of failure is keeping you behind
- 5 ways to ritualise failure in your daily life + more
Listen now to change your entire mindset towards setbacks!
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For business: psychologyofyour20s@gmail.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hello everybody. Before we get into the episode, I wanted
to let you guys know that we now have a
YouTube channel. You guys have been asking for video episodes
and video versions of the podcast for so long. We
finally were able to make it happen. We've been doing
it for a couple of months now. So if you
like watching your podcast, if you want to see behind
(00:43):
the scenes, if you want to see some more live
and in your face recordings, that is where you should go.
It's just the Psychology of your Twenties on YouTube. I'd
really appreciate you quickly jumping over there and subscribing, because
it's a new platform for me. It's a new thing
that I am trying out. But I hope you enjoy it.
I hope you love it. Without further ado, let's get
(01:04):
into the episode. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here back for another episode, as we of
course break down the psychology of our twenties. Today we
are talking about failure, but not the bad parts about failure,
(01:27):
not even why failure necessarily sucks or feels terrible, but
rather we're doing a full one to eighty mindset shift
on this. We're going to talk about the gift of
failure and how falling in love with failure, maybe even
deliberately running towards it, will unlock your dream life and
(01:48):
so much of what you desire for yourself faster than
probably any other method out there. Now, this episode, it
was this is going to sound so strange, but it
was weirdly inspired by Victoria Beckham. I e Posh, spice,
stay with me here. I know this feels very off
brand for me, but I watched her documentary on Netflix
(02:11):
the other day where she describes basically the highs and
lows of her career. I posted it on my story
and so many of you responded, and it weirdly brought
up so many reflections for me on failure. Now, obviously
she is a celebrity, she had a lot of control
over the narrative that was portrayed in that documentary, But
(02:31):
I think my own relationship to failure has changed so
much recently that everything she was talking about kind of
resonated on a new level, and for the first time
in my life, I feel more positive about it than negative.
My whole life isn't focused on avoiding failure anymore, and
it definitely was when I was younger. I was so
(02:54):
obsessed with making sure every single step, every single decision,
was the perfect decision, never falling short of my expectations.
But strangely, you know, this is the year that I
have failed more than I ever have before. And maybe
I'll talk about it a little bit further down the
line when some of the dust has kind of settled,
But I have failed more this year than any other
(03:16):
year in my life, and I have never felt more
confident and certain in what I am doing, almost because
of that. So let's talk about it today. What is
the freedom that you can find in failure, especially in
your twenties, in the so called failure decade. Why is
it that failure is one of the singular things that
(03:37):
all successful people have in common, no matter what industry
they're in across time. What is it about those people
that approach failure differently? To the rest of us, and
from that, how can we cultivate a mindset that sees
this as us actually getting closer to what we want
rather than further away. That's going to sound strange given
(03:59):
how we've been taught to think about this experience, but
I promise it will make more sense as the episode
goes on. I am so into talking about this topic
at the moment in my own life and with my friends,
So I hope you can kind of feel that energy
like coming off me right now. I'm so excited to
get into it without further ado, let's talk about why
we need to fall in love and how we can
(04:21):
fall in love with failure stay with us. So let's
start with a very simple question, why do we fear failure?
I say simple, but there are many many layers to
this conundrum, starting with the most basic explanation, which is
that we fear failure because it feels bad, simple as
(04:45):
that it injures our ego, it's embarrassing, that creates, you know, emotional, psychological,
and social pain within us. Really, what it's based in
is self worth and how much we implicitly tie self
worth to external achievement and the progress the visible progress
(05:05):
we make towards our goals. When we view ourselves as
creatures of output, and I guess also creatures of performance
whose value is derived from what we do rather than
who we are inherently. Anytime we come up short of
what we expect of ourselves or what others expect from us,
it strikes really deep deep into our sense of character,
(05:29):
and it also attaches to things like our discipline, our intelligence,
our innate talent, our ability to work out, our creativity strength.
All of those things are deeply personal self assessments and
deeply personal attributes. So when we feel like because we
have failed, it's because we lack those things, or is
(05:51):
there is some deficiency in those things that is deeply painful,
And it's mainly first and foremost to do with our ego. Now,
of course this didn't come from nowhere. If you have
ever been around children recently, specifically young kids, you will
notice they don't really concern themselves with whether what they're
(06:13):
doing is good or comparatively better than anyone else or
up to their own standards. All they want to do
is explore and learn and appreciate and love. And then
at some stage this pressure gets added onto them onto us. Now.
Of course, you know, kids make mistakes, but all their
(06:34):
mistakes are like, hey, when I jump off the playground,
I will break my arm. I'm not going to jump
off the playground. Or when I hit someone, I will
be scolded. These are all lessons and you know, mistakes
that hopefully shape them into good and safe people when
there is an academic setting, When they enter a schooling setting,
(06:56):
that's when like this idea of failure that we know
now actually beg to take hold, the idea of like,
there is a way I should perform, there is something
I should be able to do or obtain. People have
expectations for me to be able to do this, and
so when I don't, that means I am not good enough.
That means I have failed. It should come as no
surprise that this situation, this setting, combined with a critical
(07:23):
childhood environment, specifically parents who have higher standards for us,
and make that known, this really exacerbates the situation and
this feeling or fear of failure. You know how parents
may just want better for us. We can give them
the benefit of the doubt in these situations and say,
you know, they just they thought that what they were
(07:45):
doing was correct, But in the end, studies own critical
parenting have found the long term effects of this are
actually probably the reverse of what our parents expected. It's perfectionism.
It's a crippling desire to succeed, but that actually creates
greater procrastination, greater inflexibility, incapably higher standards that make failure
(08:11):
feel like such an emotional burden that the only way
to avoid it is to not even try. Over time,
as well, I feel like their voice, the voice of
the critical parent, begins to mold with our own inner
critics voice as well, and so it's almost impossible to
indistinguish them. Like when we feel like we have failed,
(08:32):
all we hear is their voice in our heads saying,
try harder. That's not good enough, that doesn't meet my standards,
I'm disappointed in you. These experiences and there's so many
others that are like this, but these experiences create learned
associations where failure feels unsafe Psychologically, our brains code it
(08:55):
as a threat, activating that same kind of panicked response
would have for anything that's terrifying or fearful or threatening.
So really, what it is is that our sense of
failure comes from social expectation, and these rules around what
success is and isn't and those rules are the ones
(09:16):
that we've inherited from generations and generations before us, And
these rules are based on this hierarchy for what is
successful and what is not. Often success means having more,
being the best, obtaining more, being number one, this elevated status.
(09:37):
What's interesting is that, again that is completely socially conditioned
and subjective. You know, animals don't agonize over their failures.
Our perception of whether we've failed or been successful as well,
like really changes based on what we've been told about
the task, or told about the thing that we're doing,
or about certain performance metrics. Fe example, this is the
(10:01):
example actually I used with a friend the other day,
the two hundred meter spraint at the Olympics. Now, if
you want to win gold, if you want to be
a so called success at that sport, being the fastest
would make you a winner. Being the slowest would make
you think of yourself as a failure. But imagine if
the actual task of the two hundred meters was to
run backwards or was to cartwheel the whole thing. The
(10:25):
fastest person would then be seen as a failure. Because
the structure of the task has changed, not because of
anything that's wrong with them. They are still the fastest.
That just doesn't matter. This is the same with life sometimes,
you know, there is a big focus again on accumulating,
on being the best, on getting ahead. But if our
performance metrics for the task of life was instead to
(10:49):
enjoy ourselves, to love more, to experience more, to try
and to fail and to learn all like this whole hierarchy,
this whole concept of what makes someone a success and
what makes someone a failure, would change because it is
socially conditioned. I think. Aside from that, on a more
(11:10):
personal level, you know, sometimes we fear of failure because
we actually just don't like the idea of being seen,
of being in the spotlight for seemingly the wrong reasons.
You don't actually have a fear of failing, You fear
of failing in public. I think this is why we
resonate a lot with those videos that are like I
(11:32):
disappeared for a year and I came back a whole
new person, Like people love those videos. And I saw
someone say it's because the disappearing part allows us to
conceal the occasional ugliness of trying and failing. The disappearing
part means that we don't have to see all the
times that someone did not meet their own expectations or
felt like they had fallen behind. Our fear of being
(11:55):
perceived is where this comes from. Also on another non
social level, sometimes it's just the cost of failure that
scares us. Now, of course that's the financial cost, it's
also the time cost, the energy costs, the effort costs,
the opportunity cost that we could have put elsewhere. When
(12:17):
we put a lot into something and it doesn't go
our way, it feels like a waste and our natural
human loss aversion, this instinct we have it cringes at
that feeling, you know. If we strip away all the
social pressure, the disappointment, the comparison, sometimes we just really
want something for ourselves and we bet everything we have
(12:39):
on it and it doesn't happen, and that lack of
a payout is what can be devastating. And this is
where the relationship between privilege and failure is so important.
To discuss the cost of failure. It's going to differ
for different people, and that will change the cycle logical
(13:00):
relationship that we have with it. From a psychological standpoint,
Our willingness to take risks is influenced by something that
we call perceived safety. If we grow up with financial
or social privilege, access to education, access to second chances,
(13:21):
supportive networks, family wealth, or simply the reassurance that you
can recover, your brain will learn that failure is survivable.
You can afford to see it as a learning experience
rather than a threat, and this creates a more secure mindset,
one that supports experimentation and creativity and resilience. It's like
(13:44):
that documentary you know, to bring up Victoria Beckham twice
in this episode, you know, someone DMed me and she
made a great point that yes she was brave to try,
but her company did go bankrupt and she did have
a multimillionaire husband to support that, and that safety net
is actually what secured her inevitable success, not just her
(14:06):
attitude towards failure. It's easier to take those kinds of
risks when you have security, food, warmth, and money. In contrast,
when money is tight or opportunities are scarce. You know,
failure isn't just emotional, as it is with everybody. It's
also about survival and it can trigger a deep sense
(14:27):
of danger and scarcity that some people you know, they
just may never feel that. People who have less privilege
often develop what Columbia University psychologists they first labeled this
in the nineties. It's called a prevention focus. So a
prevention focus means that their motivation for doing well or
(14:48):
for pursuing things centers on avoiding loss rather than seeking growth.
It's not like they're less ambitious or less capable. It's
not even that they're less likely to achieve what they
want or be successful. It's just that for them, their
motivation is different and the stakes are higher. If you have,
(15:11):
in contrast, a promotion focus compared to a prevention focus,
your motivation is I love the idea of winning. I've
envisioning how good this is going to feel. I want
a successful life. I want to challenge myself. It's less
about I want to escape poverty, and it's less about
I want to avoid bankrupting myself or my family, and
(15:34):
more about what can be an addition to your life.
So when we say don't be afraid to fail, we
do need to acknowledge that that is much easier advice
to follow when you have a safety net and I
just felt the need to say that because going forward,
obviously I'm going to talk about how we can celebrate failures,
bigants more, but we do have to make that caveat that.
(15:54):
You know, there is another part of this picture that
you can't just ignore. So when we fear failure, ye,
whether because of context, attitude, psychology, upbringing, a few things happen. Firstly,
I often find that the more I want something, the
more I don't want to fail, the harder it actually
(16:15):
becomes to act on that feeling or to achieve that dream,
because I am so scared of jinxing it that the
pressure amounts to do and to act. But with each
step there is this constant back and forth internally that's like,
well is this the exact right next step? Will I
regret my next move? And so I don't end up
(16:36):
doing anything. You've probably heard of this term analysis paralysis.
This is what this is describing. You're so invested in
the outcome of a decision that you actually can't make
the decision because the possibility of it being wrong paralyzes you,
petrifies you. So instead of taking that chance, you just
do nothing, and as a result, you get nowhere. We
(17:00):
may label it as different things. You may call it
self sabotage, avoidance, procrastination, laziness. No, it all actually stems
from wanting something really deeply, and it stems from that
fear of failure. The second consequence is that you may
still be able to act and make decisions, but you've
(17:21):
kind of got like one foot in and one foot out.
You kind of we call it playing defensively. You hesitate
before taking the leap, and because you hesitate, that actually
hurts you. It's no surprise that a lot of research
on this has been done with elite student athletes or
just elite athletes in general. In fact, one meta analysis
(17:42):
I found from twenty twenty one found that in the
last ten years, over forty five studies on the fear
of failure in rugby players, basketball players, sprinters, I don't know,
water polo players all show that fearing failure is a
significant production of poorer performance because it creates anxiety around
(18:04):
what the next move will be, and it means that again,
people play defensively. It's almost like we fear failure to
protect ourselves from failure, but it actually makes the chances
of failure greater. It's all like an illusion, an illusion
of control. The final cost of fearing failure is that
(18:25):
we don't allow ourselves to experiment. Even if we can
act on our desires and we do find success, we
still remain quite rigid and quite inflexible. We don't try
new things, we don't take risks. We can develop this
deep sense that at any moment, this can all be
taken away. Even when we have success, even when we
(18:47):
got an a, even when we got the job we wanted,
we got the promotion, we got the deal, it doesn't
feel good enough because now we're imagining not having it,
and that fear still haunts us. I can personally say
this has happened to me when my podcast first started
gaining listeners, not to like break the fourth wall here,
(19:08):
but when it did, and it was very unexpected, I
was just paralyzed by like this can be taken away
at any moment and I could still fail. I could
still like this could all just go away, and it
meant that I didn't try things and that I was
so like I just felt like handcuffed to everything that
(19:30):
I'd always done, like the first two years of the show,
like trying to make it exactly as it always was
that I didn't like experiment, and it's probably only now
that I've been like, Okay, who cares, Like I'm going
to try new things? There's no point succeeding at something
if I don't actually enjoy the process. This is the
thing that all successful people know to be true, and
that I've learnt from being around successful people and having
(19:54):
the privilege to be around successful people. You cannot win
if you don't have some skin in the game. You
will not find love, if you never open the door
to the possibility of being hurt. You will never be
considered at work if you're too scared to put your
hand up and say I want that. You will never
be recognized for your art if you don't make it,
(20:16):
and that means starting from a place that you may
not be proud of, and that may make you consider
yourself a failure. You know those times when like you've
heard a quote so many times before and then it
just suddenly takes on like a whole deeper new meaning
for you. That that is this quote for me, like
you've got to have some skin in the game. That
(20:38):
is like how I really am planning to live my
life for the next couple of months or hopefully forever.
You have to be prepared to fail and to maybe
be hurt. Successful people also know that you need to
have enough ego to think you can do it, but
not too much that you don't think setbacks say anything
other than I have more to learn or this is
(21:00):
my time. You have to just be stupidly stubborn and
delusional about your ideas. I read this fantastic excerpt from
the book The Anatomy of a Breakthrough by Adam Adler,
where he talks about how the perfect success to failure
ratio is around sixteen percent, so one in six times,
(21:22):
sixteen percent of the time you will make errors, or
you will have to make an error, or you will
have to fail in order to find success. And he
looks at these case studies, or the researchers looked at
these case studies of all these successful people, successful businesses,
successful artists, and all of them kind of came back
to this failure point. Sixteen percent of the time, one
(21:43):
in six times they tried something, they objectively or subjectively
they failed. But once you allow that to be the
case and you make room for that, that's when your
progress actually skyrockets. That is the secret to success. Okay,
we're going to talk about some of the other ways
that you can reframe and fall in love with failure.
(22:04):
After this short break, stay with us, Okay, So I
want to give you a few other ways you can
allow yourself to fall in love with failure. We've been
talking a lot about what successful people do differently and
(22:25):
what that teaches us about the relationship we have between
failure and thriving, and I want to cite one more
study on this topic. It is one of my favorite
studies of all time, and if you follow me on
Instagram at that psychology podcast for a little plug, you
most certainly will have heard of it. I talk about
it there like probably more than I should. But it
(22:46):
is a study by Angela Duckworth that found that more
than anything else, more than IQ, even at times, more
than background and how you were raised, the thing that
predicts success in people is grit. Grit, the ability to
persevere even in tough times, the ability to fail and
to push through despite difficulty. This is the thing that
(23:10):
she found time and time again bridges the gap between
raw talent or limited talent and actually achieving your goals
and achieving your dreams. It's a tolerance for failure. It's
the ability to greet your teeth and just say, I
might have to suffer for this dream, and I might
have to be pained by the stream and buy what happens,
but I'm going to do it anyway anyways, And that's
(23:32):
the superpower. Something to add on to this as well
is that not only is failure just a part of
the progress and process, sometimes it is, if nothing else,
the most efficient way to get ahead, to fail forward.
That's like they're saying, right, to fail forward, you will
never and I truly believe this, you will never learn
(23:53):
faster then you will learn from failing, because the emotional
resonance of it is going to mean the lesson is
not forgotten.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
They find this in experiments on learning and memory. People
remember better when a negative experience was attached to a
choice versus when they were slowly rewarded towards the right choice.
I think it also means when you fail you get
to close doors. You'd otherwise just sit staring at and
just sit and contemplate for longer than you needed to
(24:25):
when the outcome was always going to be the same.
You just waited longer to get there personally. I think
this is especially the case with love. I'm sure my
friends sick of hearing me say this, but I always
say to them, like, if you really like someone, don't
agonize over whether they like you back or whatever. Like
ask them make a move, say like I want to
(24:46):
date you, or like I want to be committed, or
I want to see you, and you will get your
answer really quick, either it's a yes or a no.
And if it's a no, then you've just saved yourself,
like so much time that you otherwise would have spent
worrying about being rejected or worrying about failing. In this
(25:06):
relationship scenario. Failure also creates growth because yes, it is
a fast delivery system for lessons, but also because through
challenge and sometimes through loss, like you gain resilience and
you gain new skills. Whenever I fail, I always think
(25:26):
to myself, and I always think about bodybuilders actually really
buff people, and how they build muscle. They build muscle
by breaking their muscle down. Intense exercise actually creates these
tiny microscopic damage or tears to the muscle, which the
body then fills in and rebuilds to make them stronger.
(25:49):
I always think about this, You have to break muscle
to build it back. Sometimes you have to experience the
unpleasantness of failure to know what went wrong, to know
why it probably wasn't the right time, and to come
back and to do it better and to build the muscle.
Failure is like it is such a gift in that way,
(26:10):
like the pain is never for nothing, Like there's always
some kind of growth on the other side. So when
we take all of these like lessons and learnings from
research and like from the lives of people we admire,
you start to really see that when you change your
relationship to failure, you do become untouchable because the emotional
(26:31):
reaction you have to it will no longer slow you down.
In fact, it will speed things up because it will
fuel you, It will motivate you, it will direct you.
How I picture this for all of us is like
encountering failure and like genuinely being like, oh my god, yes,
and like celebrating it and being like this is amazing.
(26:51):
And maybe that's a bit far fetched that we could
have such a positive reaction to it. But I like
to imagine, you know, not getting the grade, not getting
the job, not getting the time, for your run, not
getting the progress you wanted, and being like this is
a gold mine for me. This is like a treasure
of learnings that everyone who's succeeded on their first go
(27:11):
or everyone who didn't try, they don't get this, Like
they don't get this, these lessons like these are just
for me. These are just for the people who try
and fail. No one else gets those.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
I can't speak for you guys, but sometimes as well,
nothing motivates me more than being told I can't do things,
or not being successful the first time around and having
to prove it to myself or maybe to others. It's
we know that this has a name. It's called the
underdog effect or the rebellion theory. You'll need to prove
(27:45):
yourself or others or your failures wrong. Actually has such
a deeply motivational power that can at times be stronger
than just your own initial urge to want something like
I have to prove this wrong. This rebellion ee is
like whether it's spite, whether it's ego or whatever it is,
whether it's pride, it drives you and it forces you
(28:08):
to get back on the horse. So to finish this episode,
I'm going to give you some rapid fire tips to
kind of ritualize failure in your life and therefore fall
in love with it, to practice it like you want
a craft or a skill. Firstly, I'm going to challenge
you to just start when you don't yet know whether
things will be perfect. Start without all the information. Whether
(28:32):
it's an essay, an assignment, whether it's applying for a
job you don't quite know you're qualified for, whether it's
asking someone on a date. This might be hard if
you're a perfectionist, But the biggest hurdle I think we
actually need to get over is the first hurdle. Whenever
we want to do something, The first hurdle is the
hardest of just being like I'm going to act, I'm
(28:54):
going to stop thinking about it, and I'm going to
do something. Getting over that initial fear that stops the impulse.
I like to use the five minute principle. This basically
says you can do a lot of things in five
minutes and four five minutes. So whatever it is, why
not just try for five minutes and see how you feel.
Try and start to write that book. Just through five
(29:15):
minutes of writing, five minutes of painting, five minutes of
this job application, five minutes of the essay, and you'll
actually notice that you end up having a lot of momentum.
And you know how much you thought this was going
to be difficult. You thought that this task was going
to be hard or burdensome. It's actually not, and you'll
actually find a lot of joy in doing it. And
(29:37):
it probably felt like a lot of work, but you
know the work was actually just what your mind is
created to stop you from trying the first Like the
five minute principle is so fantastic for getting over like
the initial stagnation or the initial the initial fears that
kind of hold you back from doing I also say
(29:58):
once a month, be a beginner. Just do something that
you've never done before and be terrible at it. I
was doing this a lot last year with like pottery,
I was doing I don't know what I was thinking,
but I was in this like intermedient class and I
was terrible. I also was the person who had the
most fun, Like I can objectively say I was having
(30:19):
the most fun because I didn't care, Like I didn't
care if this was like it's just sometimes the best
feeling being the worst at something because the only way
you can go is up, and you just get to
like hang out in this place of experimentation, and you're
gonna hang out in this place of just being completely
excited by what there is to learn. I'd also ask
(30:41):
you to be reflective and just to look back at
times that you've failed in the past to see how
much wiser you have become because of it. You know,
some of the ways I've failed is like I didn't
I've talked about this before, Like, you know, I applied
for all these internships and jobs when I was first
leaving university, and I didn't get like a single one,
(31:02):
and I had to come back the year afterwards and
apply again, and you know, luckily I got one offer.
That first year felt like a failure. I came back
and I was and I was doing better the second time,
at least, you know, I had a job by that
stage as well. Like so many failures that it's almost
hard for me to even call them out as failures
because they've just been integrated into my life as lessons.
(31:25):
Like obviously, I did my half marathon a couple of
weeks ago, right, and there was a lot of failure
leading up to that. Runs that I just didn't finish
runs that would like I walked that just felt awful.
It's hard for me to even see those as failures
because like they had to happen, I had to get
them out of the way to get to the good stuff.
(31:46):
I'd also say, try and have a process for what
you will do or give to yourself after you have failed.
Almost make it like a date night, like the day
after you realize like, oh my god, maybe I have
to quit this thing, maybe this will just not work,
maybe this is is a so called failure. Reward yourself.
(32:08):
Go take yourself out for dinner, get a glass of wine,
get some pasta, bring your journal, and just write down
everything that you learn from that, everything that this moment
has taught you, that it's going to really help you
in the future. And I also want you to be
very diligent and honest with yourself about what was within
(32:30):
your control during this situation and what was outside of
your control, what you can change, what you are responsible for,
and what you are not now in absorbing failure. That
doesn't mean that we need to just be like, well,
this was all my fault. I just need to work harder.
I just didn't have it in me this time. Sometimes
it is just timing. Sometimes it is just the situation,
(32:53):
and it is just context, and it is just that
someone worked harder than you, or someone got to the
idea before you, or someone had more privileged than you.
It's important to acknowledge those things so that you don't
take the entire burden of a misstep or a missed
opportunity onto yourself, but also realize and take what can
(33:14):
be changed and make sure that that is the more
important thing. The most important thing is what you choose
to do with the circumstances, and also what you can
learn from the previous situations and apply. So acknowledge it,
but don't ling it for too long, and just take
the lessons and remember what I said before. Those lessons
(33:34):
are something that the person who tries, the person who
just like succeeds in their first try, sorry, does not
get this. Is like you are the only one who
gets these lessons. I'd also say, just try and get
more comfortable with sharing failures. I'm so lucky. I have
friends where we do this all the time. We talk
very openly about the things that didn't go right, and
(33:56):
that's honestly just so reassuring sometimes and just so comforting
to be like, Okay, someone else has been here, and
just remember that if you are going to fail, the
best time to do it is now, especially if you're
in your twenties. I know most of us are. It
is the psychology of your twenties after all, Like, this
(34:21):
is the failure decade. I really don't think that you're
actually even an adult until like thirty. This is just
like your trial period, right, This is like the probation
period for your job. This is the probation period for
your adult life. This is just where nothing like you
can just try and fail and just like completely maybe
(34:42):
even make it full of yourself hopefully not, but like
just completely be a beginner. And it won't It won't
do anything other than make things better in the future
because you have learned and will make you a more
empathetic person, will make you a wiser person, will probably
make you a more successful person rather than if you
(35:03):
just sat and waited for everything to be perfect without
ever actually learning a lesson from your mistakes. I will
also say a quote, a final quote that has been
resonating with me when we talk about failure, when we
talk about having big dreams for ourselves, which I really
hope you do. I hope you have big dreams for yourself.
Is a quote from The Alchemist. I recently reread that book.
(35:26):
It's one of my favorite books. I've read it so
many times and it felt like a great time to
reread it. And in the book there's this very famous quote.
When you have a dream, the whole universe conspires to
make it come true. When you really want something, forces
beyond you will conspire to make it happen. I don't
know if that's true, to be honest, but I've felt it.
(35:48):
I felt what I think is a version of it,
and I think it's something to really hold on to
that wanting something and acting on it is never not
going to be rewarded in some way or another. People
love to see people who are working hard. People love
to be inspired and motivated by people who go after
their dreams. That's you. That's going to be your situation.
(36:11):
Those can be your circumstances where the Universe, God, the Source,
whatever it is, just the powers that be are conspiring
in your favor because you have put you know, had
some skin in the game. You've put yourself on the
line and said like, I'm willing to sacrifice and learn
for what I want. So I think that is all
(36:32):
we have time for. You. Guys, know, I've been doing
this thing where if you've made it this far in
the episode, hello, welcome, Thank you for listening. I've been
asking people to leave stories or leave something in the
comments that you know it's just for the people who
who made it to this point and today, I really
want to learn from your failures. What has been the
(36:54):
biggest failure in your twenties. I want you to share,
if you feel comfortable, the details of it below, or
you can be vague about it, just so that we
can learn from each other, and also so that we
can feel that this is a normalized that this is important,
particularly if maybe you're in your later twenties or even
not in your twenties at all. What was something that
(37:15):
you failed at in your early twenties that you're glad
that you did. I really want to I really want
to know. I want to be able to learn from
that make it feel more normal and just like a
completely natural part of growth. But I appreciate you listening
as far as you have. If you are not already,
make sure you are following us wherever you are listening
to the show right now on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts,
(37:37):
on the iHeartRadio app. We have December Guest Month coming
up in a couple of weeks, No, in like a month,
not a couple of weeks, several weeks, and I want
you to be around for that, because, oh my gosh,
we have some insane guests this year. I just finished
recording with one of them earlier and the conversation went
for over two hours. Don't know how I'm gonna cut
it down, but make sure that you were around for
(37:59):
that exciting chapter each year. I love doing our guest series,
so I can't wait for you guys to hear it,
and that you're following us on Instagram as well at
that Psychology podcast. We also have a YouTube and we
have an Instagram. No, I already said that. We have
a YouTube, and we have a substack. If you want
the transcript to the episodes, including this episode right here,
(38:21):
you can follow us there. It's obviously completely free. But
until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, embrace, celebrate,
fall in love with failure, and we will talk very
very soon
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hello everybody. Before we get into the episode, I wanted
to let you guys know that we now have a
YouTube channel. You guys have been asking for video episodes
and video versions of the podcast for so long. We
finally were able to make it happen. We've been doing
it for a couple of months now. So if you
like watching your podcast, if you want to see behind
(00:43):
the scenes, if you want to see some more live
and in your face recordings, that is where you should go.
It's just the Psychology of your Twenties on YouTube. I'd
really appreciate you quickly jumping over there and subscribing, because
it's a new platform for me. It's a new thing
that I am trying out. But I hope you enjoy it.
I hope you love it. Without further ado, let's get
(01:04):
into the episode. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here back for another episode, as we of
course break down the psychology of our twenties. Today we
are talking about failure, but not the bad parts about failure,
(01:27):
not even why failure necessarily sucks or feels terrible, but
rather we're doing a full one to eighty mindset shift
on this. We're going to talk about the gift of
failure and how falling in love with failure, maybe even
deliberately running towards it, will unlock your dream life and
(01:48):
so much of what you desire for yourself faster than
probably any other method out there. Now, this episode, it
was this is going to sound so strange, but it
was weirdly inspired by Victoria Beckham. I e Posh, spice,
stay with me here. I know this feels very off
brand for me, but I watched her documentary on Netflix
(02:11):
the other day where she describes basically the highs and
lows of her career. I posted it on my story
and so many of you responded, and it weirdly brought
up so many reflections for me on failure. Now, obviously
she is a celebrity, she had a lot of control
over the narrative that was portrayed in that documentary, But
(02:31):
I think my own relationship to failure has changed so
much recently that everything she was talking about kind of
resonated on a new level, and for the first time
in my life, I feel more positive about it than negative.
My whole life isn't focused on avoiding failure anymore, and
it definitely was when I was younger. I was so
(02:54):
obsessed with making sure every single step, every single decision,
was the perfect decision, never falling short of my expectations.
But strangely, you know, this is the year that I
have failed more than I ever have before. And maybe
I'll talk about it a little bit further down the
line when some of the dust has kind of settled,
But I have failed more this year than any other
(03:16):
year in my life, and I have never felt more
confident and certain in what I am doing, almost because
of that. So let's talk about it today. What is
the freedom that you can find in failure, especially in
your twenties, in the so called failure decade. Why is
it that failure is one of the singular things that
(03:37):
all successful people have in common, no matter what industry
they're in across time. What is it about those people
that approach failure differently? To the rest of us, and
from that, how can we cultivate a mindset that sees
this as us actually getting closer to what we want
rather than further away. That's going to sound strange given
(03:59):
how we've been taught to think about this experience, but
I promise it will make more sense as the episode
goes on. I am so into talking about this topic
at the moment in my own life and with my friends,
So I hope you can kind of feel that energy
like coming off me right now. I'm so excited to
get into it without further ado, let's talk about why
we need to fall in love and how we can
(04:21):
fall in love with failure stay with us. So let's
start with a very simple question, why do we fear failure?
I say simple, but there are many many layers to
this conundrum, starting with the most basic explanation, which is
that we fear failure because it feels bad, simple as
(04:45):
that it injures our ego, it's embarrassing, that creates, you know, emotional, psychological,
and social pain within us. Really, what it's based in
is self worth and how much we implicitly tie self
worth to external achievement and the progress the visible progress
(05:05):
we make towards our goals. When we view ourselves as
creatures of output, and I guess also creatures of performance
whose value is derived from what we do rather than
who we are inherently. Anytime we come up short of
what we expect of ourselves or what others expect from us,
it strikes really deep deep into our sense of character,
(05:29):
and it also attaches to things like our discipline, our intelligence,
our innate talent, our ability to work out, our creativity strength.
All of those things are deeply personal self assessments and
deeply personal attributes. So when we feel like because we
have failed, it's because we lack those things, or is
(05:51):
there is some deficiency in those things that is deeply painful,
And it's mainly first and foremost to do with our ego. Now,
of course this didn't come from nowhere. If you have
ever been around children recently, specifically young kids, you will
notice they don't really concern themselves with whether what they're
(06:13):
doing is good or comparatively better than anyone else or
up to their own standards. All they want to do
is explore and learn and appreciate and love. And then
at some stage this pressure gets added onto them onto us. Now.
Of course, you know, kids make mistakes, but all their
(06:34):
mistakes are like, hey, when I jump off the playground,
I will break my arm. I'm not going to jump
off the playground. Or when I hit someone, I will
be scolded. These are all lessons and you know, mistakes
that hopefully shape them into good and safe people when
there is an academic setting, When they enter a schooling setting,
(06:56):
that's when like this idea of failure that we know
now actually beg to take hold, the idea of like,
there is a way I should perform, there is something
I should be able to do or obtain. People have
expectations for me to be able to do this, and
so when I don't, that means I am not good enough.
That means I have failed. It should come as no
surprise that this situation, this setting, combined with a critical
(07:23):
childhood environment, specifically parents who have higher standards for us,
and make that known, this really exacerbates the situation and
this feeling or fear of failure. You know how parents
may just want better for us. We can give them
the benefit of the doubt in these situations and say,
you know, they just they thought that what they were
(07:45):
doing was correct, But in the end, studies own critical
parenting have found the long term effects of this are
actually probably the reverse of what our parents expected. It's perfectionism.
It's a crippling desire to succeed, but that actually creates
greater procrastination, greater inflexibility, incapably higher standards that make failure
(08:11):
feel like such an emotional burden that the only way
to avoid it is to not even try. Over time,
as well, I feel like their voice, the voice of
the critical parent, begins to mold with our own inner
critics voice as well, and so it's almost impossible to
indistinguish them. Like when we feel like we have failed,
(08:32):
all we hear is their voice in our heads saying,
try harder. That's not good enough, that doesn't meet my standards,
I'm disappointed in you. These experiences and there's so many
others that are like this, but these experiences create learned
associations where failure feels unsafe Psychologically, our brains code it
(08:55):
as a threat, activating that same kind of panicked response
would have for anything that's terrifying or fearful or threatening.
So really, what it is is that our sense of
failure comes from social expectation, and these rules around what
success is and isn't and those rules are the ones
(09:16):
that we've inherited from generations and generations before us, And
these rules are based on this hierarchy for what is
successful and what is not. Often success means having more,
being the best, obtaining more, being number one, this elevated status.
(09:37):
What's interesting is that, again that is completely socially conditioned
and subjective. You know, animals don't agonize over their failures.
Our perception of whether we've failed or been successful as well,
like really changes based on what we've been told about
the task, or told about the thing that we're doing,
or about certain performance metrics. Fe example, this is the
(10:01):
example actually I used with a friend the other day,
the two hundred meter spraint at the Olympics. Now, if
you want to win gold, if you want to be
a so called success at that sport, being the fastest
would make you a winner. Being the slowest would make
you think of yourself as a failure. But imagine if
the actual task of the two hundred meters was to
run backwards or was to cartwheel the whole thing. The
(10:25):
fastest person would then be seen as a failure. Because
the structure of the task has changed, not because of
anything that's wrong with them. They are still the fastest.
That just doesn't matter. This is the same with life sometimes,
you know, there is a big focus again on accumulating,
on being the best, on getting ahead. But if our
performance metrics for the task of life was instead to
(10:49):
enjoy ourselves, to love more, to experience more, to try
and to fail and to learn all like this whole hierarchy,
this whole concept of what makes someone a success and
what makes someone a failure, would change because it is
socially conditioned. I think. Aside from that, on a more
(11:10):
personal level, you know, sometimes we fear of failure because
we actually just don't like the idea of being seen,
of being in the spotlight for seemingly the wrong reasons.
You don't actually have a fear of failing, You fear
of failing in public. I think this is why we
resonate a lot with those videos that are like I
(11:32):
disappeared for a year and I came back a whole
new person, Like people love those videos. And I saw
someone say it's because the disappearing part allows us to
conceal the occasional ugliness of trying and failing. The disappearing
part means that we don't have to see all the
times that someone did not meet their own expectations or
felt like they had fallen behind. Our fear of being
(11:55):
perceived is where this comes from. Also on another non
social level, sometimes it's just the cost of failure that
scares us. Now, of course that's the financial cost, it's
also the time cost, the energy costs, the effort costs,
the opportunity cost that we could have put elsewhere. When
(12:17):
we put a lot into something and it doesn't go
our way, it feels like a waste and our natural
human loss aversion, this instinct we have it cringes at
that feeling, you know. If we strip away all the
social pressure, the disappointment, the comparison, sometimes we just really
want something for ourselves and we bet everything we have
(12:39):
on it and it doesn't happen, and that lack of
a payout is what can be devastating. And this is
where the relationship between privilege and failure is so important.
To discuss the cost of failure. It's going to differ
for different people, and that will change the cycle logical
(13:00):
relationship that we have with it. From a psychological standpoint,
Our willingness to take risks is influenced by something that
we call perceived safety. If we grow up with financial
or social privilege, access to education, access to second chances,
(13:21):
supportive networks, family wealth, or simply the reassurance that you
can recover, your brain will learn that failure is survivable.
You can afford to see it as a learning experience
rather than a threat, and this creates a more secure mindset,
one that supports experimentation and creativity and resilience. It's like
(13:44):
that documentary you know, to bring up Victoria Beckham twice
in this episode, you know, someone DMed me and she
made a great point that yes she was brave to try,
but her company did go bankrupt and she did have
a multimillionaire husband to support that, and that safety net
is actually what secured her inevitable success, not just her
(14:06):
attitude towards failure. It's easier to take those kinds of
risks when you have security, food, warmth, and money. In contrast,
when money is tight or opportunities are scarce. You know,
failure isn't just emotional, as it is with everybody. It's
also about survival and it can trigger a deep sense
(14:27):
of danger and scarcity that some people you know, they
just may never feel that. People who have less privilege
often develop what Columbia University psychologists they first labeled this
in the nineties. It's called a prevention focus. So a
prevention focus means that their motivation for doing well or
(14:48):
for pursuing things centers on avoiding loss rather than seeking growth.
It's not like they're less ambitious or less capable. It's
not even that they're less likely to achieve what they
want or be successful. It's just that for them, their
motivation is different and the stakes are higher. If you have,
(15:11):
in contrast, a promotion focus compared to a prevention focus,
your motivation is I love the idea of winning. I've
envisioning how good this is going to feel. I want
a successful life. I want to challenge myself. It's less
about I want to escape poverty, and it's less about
I want to avoid bankrupting myself or my family, and
(15:34):
more about what can be an addition to your life.
So when we say don't be afraid to fail, we
do need to acknowledge that that is much easier advice
to follow when you have a safety net and I
just felt the need to say that because going forward,
obviously I'm going to talk about how we can celebrate failures,
bigants more, but we do have to make that caveat that.
(15:54):
You know, there is another part of this picture that
you can't just ignore. So when we fear failure, ye,
whether because of context, attitude, psychology, upbringing, a few things happen. Firstly,
I often find that the more I want something, the
more I don't want to fail, the harder it actually
(16:15):
becomes to act on that feeling or to achieve that dream,
because I am so scared of jinxing it that the
pressure amounts to do and to act. But with each
step there is this constant back and forth internally that's like,
well is this the exact right next step? Will I
regret my next move? And so I don't end up
(16:36):
doing anything. You've probably heard of this term analysis paralysis.
This is what this is describing. You're so invested in
the outcome of a decision that you actually can't make
the decision because the possibility of it being wrong paralyzes you,
petrifies you. So instead of taking that chance, you just
do nothing, and as a result, you get nowhere. We
(17:00):
may label it as different things. You may call it
self sabotage, avoidance, procrastination, laziness. No, it all actually stems
from wanting something really deeply, and it stems from that
fear of failure. The second consequence is that you may
still be able to act and make decisions, but you've
(17:21):
kind of got like one foot in and one foot out.
You kind of we call it playing defensively. You hesitate
before taking the leap, and because you hesitate, that actually
hurts you. It's no surprise that a lot of research
on this has been done with elite student athletes or
just elite athletes in general. In fact, one meta analysis
(17:42):
I found from twenty twenty one found that in the
last ten years, over forty five studies on the fear
of failure in rugby players, basketball players, sprinters, I don't know,
water polo players all show that fearing failure is a
significant production of poorer performance because it creates anxiety around
(18:04):
what the next move will be, and it means that again,
people play defensively. It's almost like we fear failure to
protect ourselves from failure, but it actually makes the chances
of failure greater. It's all like an illusion, an illusion
of control. The final cost of fearing failure is that
(18:25):
we don't allow ourselves to experiment. Even if we can
act on our desires and we do find success, we
still remain quite rigid and quite inflexible. We don't try
new things, we don't take risks. We can develop this
deep sense that at any moment, this can all be
taken away. Even when we have success, even when we
(18:47):
got an a, even when we got the job we wanted,
we got the promotion, we got the deal, it doesn't
feel good enough because now we're imagining not having it,
and that fear still haunts us. I can personally say
this has happened to me when my podcast first started
gaining listeners, not to like break the fourth wall here,
(19:08):
but when it did, and it was very unexpected, I
was just paralyzed by like this can be taken away
at any moment and I could still fail. I could
still like this could all just go away, and it
meant that I didn't try things and that I was
so like I just felt like handcuffed to everything that
(19:30):
I'd always done, like the first two years of the show,
like trying to make it exactly as it always was
that I didn't like experiment, and it's probably only now
that I've been like, Okay, who cares, Like I'm going
to try new things? There's no point succeeding at something
if I don't actually enjoy the process. This is the
thing that all successful people know to be true, and
that I've learnt from being around successful people and having
(19:54):
the privilege to be around successful people. You cannot win
if you don't have some skin in the game. You
will not find love, if you never open the door
to the possibility of being hurt. You will never be
considered at work if you're too scared to put your
hand up and say I want that. You will never
be recognized for your art if you don't make it,
(20:16):
and that means starting from a place that you may
not be proud of, and that may make you consider
yourself a failure. You know those times when like you've
heard a quote so many times before and then it
just suddenly takes on like a whole deeper new meaning
for you. That that is this quote for me, like
you've got to have some skin in the game. That
(20:38):
is like how I really am planning to live my
life for the next couple of months or hopefully forever.
You have to be prepared to fail and to maybe
be hurt. Successful people also know that you need to
have enough ego to think you can do it, but
not too much that you don't think setbacks say anything
other than I have more to learn or this is
(21:00):
my time. You have to just be stupidly stubborn and
delusional about your ideas. I read this fantastic excerpt from
the book The Anatomy of a Breakthrough by Adam Adler,
where he talks about how the perfect success to failure
ratio is around sixteen percent, so one in six times,
(21:22):
sixteen percent of the time you will make errors, or
you will have to make an error, or you will
have to fail in order to find success. And he
looks at these case studies, or the researchers looked at
these case studies of all these successful people, successful businesses,
successful artists, and all of them kind of came back
to this failure point. Sixteen percent of the time, one
(21:43):
in six times they tried something, they objectively or subjectively
they failed. But once you allow that to be the
case and you make room for that, that's when your
progress actually skyrockets. That is the secret to success. Okay,
we're going to talk about some of the other ways
that you can reframe and fall in love with failure.
(22:04):
After this short break, stay with us, Okay, So I
want to give you a few other ways you can
allow yourself to fall in love with failure. We've been
talking a lot about what successful people do differently and
(22:25):
what that teaches us about the relationship we have between
failure and thriving, and I want to cite one more
study on this topic. It is one of my favorite
studies of all time, and if you follow me on
Instagram at that psychology podcast for a little plug, you
most certainly will have heard of it. I talk about
it there like probably more than I should. But it
(22:46):
is a study by Angela Duckworth that found that more
than anything else, more than IQ, even at times, more
than background and how you were raised, the thing that
predicts success in people is grit. Grit, the ability to
persevere even in tough times, the ability to fail and
to push through despite difficulty. This is the thing that
(23:10):
she found time and time again bridges the gap between
raw talent or limited talent and actually achieving your goals
and achieving your dreams. It's a tolerance for failure. It's
the ability to greet your teeth and just say, I
might have to suffer for this dream, and I might
have to be pained by the stream and buy what happens,
but I'm going to do it anyway anyways, And that's
(23:32):
the superpower. Something to add on to this as well
is that not only is failure just a part of
the progress and process, sometimes it is, if nothing else,
the most efficient way to get ahead, to fail forward.
That's like they're saying, right, to fail forward, you will
never and I truly believe this, you will never learn
(23:53):
faster then you will learn from failing, because the emotional
resonance of it is going to mean the lesson is
not forgotten.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
They find this in experiments on learning and memory. People
remember better when a negative experience was attached to a
choice versus when they were slowly rewarded towards the right choice.
I think it also means when you fail you get
to close doors. You'd otherwise just sit staring at and
just sit and contemplate for longer than you needed to
(24:25):
when the outcome was always going to be the same.
You just waited longer to get there personally. I think
this is especially the case with love. I'm sure my
friends sick of hearing me say this, but I always
say to them, like, if you really like someone, don't
agonize over whether they like you back or whatever. Like
ask them make a move, say like I want to
(24:46):
date you, or like I want to be committed, or
I want to see you, and you will get your
answer really quick, either it's a yes or a no.
And if it's a no, then you've just saved yourself,
like so much time that you otherwise would have spent
worrying about being rejected or worrying about failing. In this
(25:06):
relationship scenario. Failure also creates growth because yes, it is
a fast delivery system for lessons, but also because through
challenge and sometimes through loss, like you gain resilience and
you gain new skills. Whenever I fail, I always think
(25:26):
to myself, and I always think about bodybuilders actually really
buff people, and how they build muscle. They build muscle
by breaking their muscle down. Intense exercise actually creates these
tiny microscopic damage or tears to the muscle, which the
body then fills in and rebuilds to make them stronger.
(25:49):
I always think about this, You have to break muscle
to build it back. Sometimes you have to experience the
unpleasantness of failure to know what went wrong, to know
why it probably wasn't the right time, and to come
back and to do it better and to build the muscle.
Failure is like it is such a gift in that way,
(26:10):
like the pain is never for nothing, Like there's always
some kind of growth on the other side. So when
we take all of these like lessons and learnings from
research and like from the lives of people we admire,
you start to really see that when you change your
relationship to failure, you do become untouchable because the emotional
(26:31):
reaction you have to it will no longer slow you down.
In fact, it will speed things up because it will
fuel you, It will motivate you, it will direct you.
How I picture this for all of us is like
encountering failure and like genuinely being like, oh my god, yes,
and like celebrating it and being like this is amazing.
(26:51):
And maybe that's a bit far fetched that we could
have such a positive reaction to it. But I like
to imagine, you know, not getting the grade, not getting
the job, not getting the time, for your run, not
getting the progress you wanted, and being like this is
a gold mine for me. This is like a treasure
of learnings that everyone who's succeeded on their first go
(27:11):
or everyone who didn't try, they don't get this, Like
they don't get this, these lessons like these are just
for me. These are just for the people who try
and fail. No one else gets those.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
I can't speak for you guys, but sometimes as well,
nothing motivates me more than being told I can't do things,
or not being successful the first time around and having
to prove it to myself or maybe to others. It's
we know that this has a name. It's called the
underdog effect or the rebellion theory. You'll need to prove
(27:45):
yourself or others or your failures wrong. Actually has such
a deeply motivational power that can at times be stronger
than just your own initial urge to want something like
I have to prove this wrong. This rebellion ee is
like whether it's spite, whether it's ego or whatever it is,
whether it's pride, it drives you and it forces you
(28:08):
to get back on the horse. So to finish this episode,
I'm going to give you some rapid fire tips to
kind of ritualize failure in your life and therefore fall
in love with it, to practice it like you want
a craft or a skill. Firstly, I'm going to challenge
you to just start when you don't yet know whether
things will be perfect. Start without all the information. Whether
(28:32):
it's an essay, an assignment, whether it's applying for a
job you don't quite know you're qualified for, whether it's
asking someone on a date. This might be hard if
you're a perfectionist, But the biggest hurdle I think we
actually need to get over is the first hurdle. Whenever
we want to do something, The first hurdle is the
hardest of just being like I'm going to act, I'm
(28:54):
going to stop thinking about it, and I'm going to
do something. Getting over that initial fear that stops the impulse.
I like to use the five minute principle. This basically
says you can do a lot of things in five
minutes and four five minutes. So whatever it is, why
not just try for five minutes and see how you feel.
Try and start to write that book. Just through five
(29:15):
minutes of writing, five minutes of painting, five minutes of
this job application, five minutes of the essay, and you'll
actually notice that you end up having a lot of momentum.
And you know how much you thought this was going
to be difficult. You thought that this task was going
to be hard or burdensome. It's actually not, and you'll
actually find a lot of joy in doing it. And
(29:37):
it probably felt like a lot of work, but you
know the work was actually just what your mind is
created to stop you from trying the first Like the
five minute principle is so fantastic for getting over like
the initial stagnation or the initial the initial fears that
kind of hold you back from doing I also say
(29:58):
once a month, be a beginner. Just do something that
you've never done before and be terrible at it. I
was doing this a lot last year with like pottery,
I was doing I don't know what I was thinking,
but I was in this like intermedient class and I
was terrible. I also was the person who had the
most fun, Like I can objectively say I was having
(30:19):
the most fun because I didn't care, Like I didn't
care if this was like it's just sometimes the best
feeling being the worst at something because the only way
you can go is up, and you just get to
like hang out in this place of experimentation, and you're
gonna hang out in this place of just being completely
excited by what there is to learn. I'd also ask
(30:41):
you to be reflective and just to look back at
times that you've failed in the past to see how
much wiser you have become because of it. You know,
some of the ways I've failed is like I didn't
I've talked about this before, Like, you know, I applied
for all these internships and jobs when I was first
leaving university, and I didn't get like a single one,
(31:02):
and I had to come back the year afterwards and
apply again, and you know, luckily I got one offer.
That first year felt like a failure. I came back
and I was and I was doing better the second time,
at least, you know, I had a job by that
stage as well. Like so many failures that it's almost
hard for me to even call them out as failures
because they've just been integrated into my life as lessons.
(31:25):
Like obviously, I did my half marathon a couple of
weeks ago, right, and there was a lot of failure
leading up to that. Runs that I just didn't finish
runs that would like I walked that just felt awful.
It's hard for me to even see those as failures
because like they had to happen, I had to get
them out of the way to get to the good stuff.
(31:46):
I'd also say, try and have a process for what
you will do or give to yourself after you have failed.
Almost make it like a date night, like the day
after you realize like, oh my god, maybe I have
to quit this thing, maybe this will just not work,
maybe this is is a so called failure. Reward yourself.
(32:08):
Go take yourself out for dinner, get a glass of wine,
get some pasta, bring your journal, and just write down
everything that you learn from that, everything that this moment
has taught you, that it's going to really help you
in the future. And I also want you to be
very diligent and honest with yourself about what was within
(32:30):
your control during this situation and what was outside of
your control, what you can change, what you are responsible for,
and what you are not now in absorbing failure. That
doesn't mean that we need to just be like, well,
this was all my fault. I just need to work harder.
I just didn't have it in me this time. Sometimes
it is just timing. Sometimes it is just the situation,
(32:53):
and it is just context, and it is just that
someone worked harder than you, or someone got to the
idea before you, or someone had more privileged than you.
It's important to acknowledge those things so that you don't
take the entire burden of a misstep or a missed
opportunity onto yourself, but also realize and take what can
(33:14):
be changed and make sure that that is the more
important thing. The most important thing is what you choose
to do with the circumstances, and also what you can
learn from the previous situations and apply. So acknowledge it,
but don't ling it for too long, and just take
the lessons and remember what I said before. Those lessons
(33:34):
are something that the person who tries, the person who
just like succeeds in their first try, sorry, does not
get this. Is like you are the only one who
gets these lessons. I'd also say, just try and get
more comfortable with sharing failures. I'm so lucky. I have
friends where we do this all the time. We talk
very openly about the things that didn't go right, and
(33:56):
that's honestly just so reassuring sometimes and just so comforting
to be like, Okay, someone else has been here, and
just remember that if you are going to fail, the
best time to do it is now, especially if you're
in your twenties. I know most of us are. It
is the psychology of your twenties after all, Like, this
(34:21):
is the failure decade. I really don't think that you're
actually even an adult until like thirty. This is just
like your trial period, right, This is like the probation
period for your job. This is the probation period for
your adult life. This is just where nothing like you
can just try and fail and just like completely maybe
(34:42):
even make it full of yourself hopefully not, but like
just completely be a beginner. And it won't It won't
do anything other than make things better in the future
because you have learned and will make you a more
empathetic person, will make you a wiser person, will probably
make you a more successful person rather than if you
(35:03):
just sat and waited for everything to be perfect without
ever actually learning a lesson from your mistakes. I will
also say a quote, a final quote that has been
resonating with me when we talk about failure, when we
talk about having big dreams for ourselves, which I really
hope you do. I hope you have big dreams for yourself.
Is a quote from The Alchemist. I recently reread that book.
(35:26):
It's one of my favorite books. I've read it so
many times and it felt like a great time to
reread it. And in the book there's this very famous quote.
When you have a dream, the whole universe conspires to
make it come true. When you really want something, forces
beyond you will conspire to make it happen. I don't
know if that's true, to be honest, but I've felt it.
(35:48):
I felt what I think is a version of it,
and I think it's something to really hold on to
that wanting something and acting on it is never not
going to be rewarded in some way or another. People
love to see people who are working hard. People love
to be inspired and motivated by people who go after
their dreams. That's you. That's going to be your situation.
(36:11):
Those can be your circumstances where the Universe, God, the Source,
whatever it is, just the powers that be are conspiring
in your favor because you have put you know, had
some skin in the game. You've put yourself on the
line and said like, I'm willing to sacrifice and learn
for what I want. So I think that is all
(36:32):
we have time for. You. Guys, know, I've been doing
this thing where if you've made it this far in
the episode, hello, welcome, Thank you for listening. I've been
asking people to leave stories or leave something in the
comments that you know it's just for the people who
who made it to this point and today, I really
want to learn from your failures. What has been the
(36:54):
biggest failure in your twenties. I want you to share,
if you feel comfortable, the details of it below, or
you can be vague about it, just so that we
can learn from each other, and also so that we
can feel that this is a normalized that this is important,
particularly if maybe you're in your later twenties or even
not in your twenties at all. What was something that
(37:15):
you failed at in your early twenties that you're glad
that you did. I really want to I really want
to know. I want to be able to learn from
that make it feel more normal and just like a
completely natural part of growth. But I appreciate you listening
as far as you have. If you are not already,
make sure you are following us wherever you are listening
to the show right now on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts,
(37:37):
on the iHeartRadio app. We have December Guest Month coming
up in a couple of weeks, No, in like a month,
not a couple of weeks, several weeks, and I want
you to be around for that, because, oh my gosh,
we have some insane guests this year. I just finished
recording with one of them earlier and the conversation went
for over two hours. Don't know how I'm gonna cut
it down, but make sure that you were around for
(37:59):
that exciting chapter each year. I love doing our guest series,
so I can't wait for you guys to hear it,
and that you're following us on Instagram as well at
that Psychology podcast. We also have a YouTube and we
have an Instagram. No, I already said that. We have
a YouTube, and we have a substack. If you want
the transcript to the episodes, including this episode right here,
(38:21):
you can follow us there. It's obviously completely free. But
until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, embrace, celebrate,
fall in love with failure, and we will talk very
very soon
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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