Become Greater Ep. 61 - The Art Of Falling Forward

We're often taught to fear failure, to see it as an endpoint or a sign of weakness. This episode challenges that entire perspective, reframing setbacks, plateaus, and mistakes not as verdicts, but as essential data and crucial learning opportunities. Discover the "Art of Failing Forward"—the skill of using these moments as stepping stones for profound growth. We explore how the physical training environment, when approached with a focus on expanding capabilities, serves as an unparalleled laboratory for mastering this art. Learn how the lessons from a missed lift, a training plateau, or a technical flaw build the very resilience, problem-solving skills, and perseverance needed to navigate and overcome life's biggest challenges.Key Insights & Takeaways in This Episode:

• Failure Isn't an End, It's Feedback: Shifting your mindset from viewing failure as a judgment to seeing it as valuable information guiding your next steps.
• Why You Need to Fail: Understanding that if you aren't occasionally encountering setbacks in your training, you likely aren't pushing your limits enough to truly expand your capabilities.
• The Training Ground as a Life Laboratory:
  • The Missed Lift: How it teaches diagnostic thinking, strategic adaptation, and deep perseverance.
  • The Plateau: How it cultivates patience, programmatic thinking, and an unwavering growth mindset.
  • The Technical Flaw: How it builds humility and highlights the power of deliberate, focused practice.
• Visceral Lessons in Resilience: How the tangible experience of overcoming physical challenges provides undeniable proof of your ability to adapt and grow stronger, building confidence that translates directly to life.
• Applying "Failing Forward" Beyond the Gym: How to use the same analytical and adaptive mindset learned in training to navigate setbacks in your career, relationships, and any new skill acquisition.
• Embracing the Process: Recognizing that challenges and setbacks aren't obstacles to your growth path; they are the path itself, forging a more capable and resilient you.

This Week's Challenge:

1. Identify one "failure" or setback—big or small—that you've experienced recently, either in your training or in another area of your life.
2. Consciously set aside any feelings of disappointment or judgment.
3. Instead, approach it like a training analysis: Ask yourself, "What is the data here? What can I objectively learn from this? Based on this valuable feedback, what is my next step forward?"

Join the conversation! @joe_cebula

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Hello, and welcome back. Today, we're going to talk about
a word that makes many people uncomfortable concept. Our society
often teaches us to fear and avoid at all costs failure.
We're conditioned to see it as an endpoint, a sign
of weakness, or a judgment on our worth. But I
want to propose a different perspective today, a perspective forge

(00:34):
and the honest crucible of dedicated physical training. We're going
to explore what I call the art of falling forward,
understanding that setbacks, mistakes, and plateaus aren't just inevitable, they're
essential learning opportunities, powerful stepping stones on the path to
expanding our capabilities, both in the gym and crucially in

(00:55):
every aspect of our life. The common views failure like
a final verdict you tried, you didn't succeed. Game over.
This leads to a fear of trying, a tendency to
play it safe, to stay within the comfortable boundaries of
what we know we can do. But think about this
in the context of our training, where the goal is

(01:17):
to constantly expand our capabilities, to push our limits. If
you are never failing in your training, are you truly
pushing hard enough? To grow. If you never miss a lift,
if you never feel your technique faulter under load, if
you never hit a point where your endurance screams no more,
chances are you're operating well within your comfort zone. And

(01:41):
while comfort feels safe, growth doesn't live there. True progress,
true expansion, requires us to meet the edge of our
abilities and sometimes to step over it. That's where failure
often happens, and that's precisely where learning begins. Our training space,

(02:01):
be it the gym or the dojo, is an unparalleled
laboratory for learning this art of falling forward. Consider the
classic example, the mist heavy lift. You've trained for this,
you've visualized it, you approach the bar with focused intent,
You initiate the lift, and it stalls. You hit a wall.
In that moment, it's easy to feel a rush of disappointment.

(02:24):
But if we apply our philosophy, this isn't a verdict,
it's data. It's immediate, honest, undeniable feedback. The art isn't
in avoiding this moment, but in how you respond to it.
Do you internalize it as I'm weak? Or do you
ask what is this telling me? Perhaps your setup wasn't

(02:46):
tight enough, Maybe you're bracing faltered. Maybe a specific muscle
group isn't strong enough through that range of motion, or
maybe your mental focus wavered. You engage in diagnostic thinking.
You analyze, then you practice strategic adaptation. You don't just
give up. You adjust your training, add accessory work, drill

(03:07):
your technique, manage your recovery, and you persist. This teaches
deep perseverance, a trust in the long term process over
short term results. Or think about hitting a plateau. This
is a different kind of failure, not a single dramatic moment,
but a sustained period where progress seems to halt. It's

(03:27):
incredibly frustrating, but it's a masterclass in patience and programmatic thinking.
It forces you to zoom out to look at the
bigger picture. Are you sleeping enough? Is your nutrition supporting
your efforts? Is your training program still appropriate or does
it need variation or a different kind of focus. It
demands that you adopt a growth mindset, believing that this

(03:50):
isn't an immutable wall, but a problem that can be
solved by changing your approach, by learning more, by adapting.
It prevents you from simply agreeing with the play, accepting
it as your new permanent limit. These lessons diagnostic thinking,
strategic adaptation, perseverance, patience, programmatic thinking, a growth mindset. They

(04:13):
aren't confined to lifting weights or mastering a movement. Their
fundamental life skills. The physical training is simply the arena
where we learn them in a way that is visceral
and palpable. You don't just read about resilience. You feel
it when you come back stronger after a setback. You
don't just understand a problem solving, You do it every
time you adjust your training to overcome a sticking point.

(04:36):
This forces us to reframe failure. It stepts to being
a judgment on our inherent worth and become simply feedback
on our current approach. It's information guiding us towards a
more effective path. Because the feedback and training is so direct,
so honest, it teaches us. It forces us to adopt
this healthier relationship with setbacks. You simply must learn from

(04:57):
them to keep expanding your capability, and in doing so,
you build a profound resilience. You learn that a setback
isn't a catastrophe. You can handle it, you can learn
from it, and you can come back stronger. This is
that hierarchy in action. Learning this critical mindset on the
fundamental physical level makes it infinitely easier to apply it

(05:19):
when facing the often more ambiguous and emotionally charged failures
in life. Think about a setback in your career. Maybe
a big project doesn't go as planned, or you don't
get the promotion you've worked for. The untrained response might
be despair or blame, but the falling forward response, honed
in training, asks what's the data? Where did the process

(05:40):
break down? What skills need strengthening? What was my technical
flaw here? How do I adapt my approach for the
next lift? You see it not as an end, but
as a crucial learning phase. Or consider a difficulty in
a relationship, an argument happens, a miscommunication occurs. Instead of
viewing it as a terminal failure, you can ask, what

(06:02):
was the technical flaw in my communication? What weakness in
my approach, perhaps impatience or poor listening was exposed? How
can I refine my technique for an extern It becomes
an opportunity to build a stronger, more capable connection, not
a reason to abandon it. The art of falling forward
is about understanding that the path to expanding our capability,

(06:24):
and that's any capability physical, mental, or emotional. It's not
a smooth, linear ascent. It's a path filled with challenges,
with stumbled with plateaus. These aren't obstacles to the path.
They are the path. They are the friction points that
force us to adapt, to learn, to grow stronger. Our
training teaches us not to fear these moments, but to

(06:45):
embrace them as essential opportunities to learn, adapt, and ultimately
become far more capable than we were before. So here's
your challenge for this week. Think about one failure or
setback you've experienced recently, big or small, in your training
or in your life. Consciously push aside any feelings of
judgment or disappointment for a moment. Instead, put on your

(07:09):
analysts path, just like you would after a mislip. Ask yourself,
what's the data here, What is this trying to teach me?
What specific thing can I learn or adjust? And what
is my next step forward? Based on this valuable feedback.
Learn to see every setback not as an endian, but
is the beginning of your next lesson. Thanks for tuning in.

(07:33):
Go out there and fail forward. It's the only way
to true grow