Failure is the mark of a winner.
If I'm judging whether someone is a winner, I don't count their victories.
I count their losses.
Someone who has failed many times has tried many times.
But someone who has never failed has never tried in their life.
Does that second one sound like a winner to you?
It seems backward. You have to lose in order to win.
Unfortunately, school doesn't do a great job teaching us how to lose. It's all about winning.
Get better grades. Beat the other team. Get into the best university.
By the time we become adults, we have no idea how to lose—despite the fact that knowing how to lose is the most critical skill to have if you want to win in life.
My objective with this piece is to teach you what school didn't:
How to fail.
The two types of failure
Before learning how to fail, you first have to understand the two types of failure:
- Silent failure
- Loud failure
Silent failures are the ones you want to avoid.
In the micro level, they seem less like failures:
- drifting along in a job that's not fulfilling
- business slowly losing revenue, but staying afloat
- staying in the same environment; doing okay, but not growing
These are deemed much more acceptable by others. Because on the outside, they don't seem like failures.
Keyword: Seem.
But with silent failures, you'll always know about the potential you didn't tap into.
In the macro level, silent failures are the true failures.
Know anyone who seems to have "never failed" once in their life?
Yeah, they were just failing silently every single day.
Loud failures are the ones you want.
In the micro level, they seem like they're the end of the world (but in the macro level, they're what force you to grow):
- getting rejected from your dream job
- getting rejected by an investor for your business
- getting rejected by that girl you cold approached
Notice the pattern?
They all deal with rejection. And rejection is very loud. It's impossible to miss. Everyone hears it, including yourself. (Hence, "loud" failure.)
Rejection sucks.
There's no denying that. But why?
Because humans are social creatures. We operate in tribes.
We're not solitary creatures like tigers. We're much more akin to wolves. We move together in packs. We have leaders, we have followers. We have alphas, we have betas, etc.
And since our social nature is baked into our DNA, we can't help but feel a sense of dread when we get rejected (a social loss) by another member of our pack.
If you want to win, you have to seek out that sense of dread that's tied to loud failures.
Living a life full of silent failures is where dreams go to die.
With silent failures, things aren't so bad that you're forced to turn your life around with drastic action. But things aren't so great that you're thriving.
If you embrace silent failures, you're essentially accepting a life of mediocrity.
But loud failures are true growth catalysts.
They bring you down. They humble you. They make you remember that you need to challenge yourself if you don't want to stay stagnant.
They're the ones that put you in a position to learn, grow, and move forward.
To become the best version of yourself.
Chase rejection
Go to any coffee shop or anyplace in person. Make a simple purchase and ask for 10 percent off. Don’t say anything else. The whole point is for you to feel uncomfortable. Commit to doing this today.
—Noah Kagan, Million Dollar Weekend
I stumbled across this challenge while working out in my basement (yes, I read between sets).
The idea is simple:
Go to a store that doesn't allow customers to haggle on price, buy something, and ask for a 10% discount.
Sounds terrifying, right?
Well anyway, it sounded terrifying and exciting to me, so I did it immediately.
Since I needed groceries anyway, I drove to my local grocery store and filled up my shopping cart.
And instead of going to the self-checkout as I normally do, I wheeled my cart to the only cashier lane that was open.
An older women was operating the lane—maybe in her 60s. We said our good mornings and she rung me up for my items.
She announced the total:
"42 dollars and 60 cents."
I stared her straight in the eye:
"Could I get a 10% discount on that?"
"No." She said, with zero hesitation.
"Okay." I pulled out my wallet, took out my card and proceeded to pay.
"What for?" She asked.
"Oh, I'm taking a business course and this is one of the assignments." I said.
And that was that.
The sky didn't fall on my head. The world didn't end.
And as silly as it sounds, I walked out of the grocery store that day feeling unstoppable.
Yes, the source of my confidence that day was asking a grocery store cashier if I could have a 10% discount and getting rejected.
I won't lie. It was uncomfortable.
But discomfort is good. You can't grow without discomfort.
So I'm passing the challenge on to you. And just like Noah recommends, commit to doing this today.
Go to a store. Buy something. Ask for a discount, knowing you're almost certainly going to get rejected.
I don't know where you are in life, but if you're in that middle zone of mediocrity—silently failing every day—then that one rejection could be the turning point for everything.
What's the worst that could happen?
If you don't go to the cold, then the cold comes to you.
—Wim Hof