If you believe that I am recommending that you do not try to start your own business or that you shouldn’t try to improve your life, you’re getting me wrong here. This isn’t a call to settle for mediocrity or an attempt to discourage you from getting out of your comfort zone and venturing into the unknown because you might end up failing repeatedly in the process or on your way to establishing a better life for you or for other people. I’m not telling you to quit here. Quitting is different. I didn’t tell anyone to quit right away if they happened to fail at something. Notice that if failure was good and if you believed that the better course of action is to fail more, it would mean that J. K. Rowling for example should’ve never tried to write the Harry Potter books, because failure is a good thing and is all learning, so her previous life of living paycheck to paycheck was all learning and experience, and is a good thing. So why abandon the failing life she had before Harry Potter, if failing is a good thing and is so beneficial? Her attempt to write the Harry Potter books confirms my thesis, because it means that she has had enough of failure to the extent that she decided to do something about it and end it for good, and she wouldn’t want to go through all this trouble and struggling to make a positive difference in her life and end her suffering, if failure was a good thing. Since failure is bad, she decided to no longer be a loser, to no longer be a failure, to no longer lead a failing, miserable, mediocre, boring, uninspiring, useless, uninteresting, horrible, or poor life or a life of a low quality. Again, this isn’t a green light or an invitation by me for you to just chill and take it easy because man failure feels bad and actually hurts. It’s the exact opposite. Since failure sucks, then you shouldn’t fail, but instead try to win more and succeed more in life.

The ugly truth is that failure is something that is purely bad, despite the entire self-help industry of the twentieth century and beyond trying to convince you otherwise. Only willpower and trying until you make it makes you succeed. Having failed before that adds you no benefit at all, and it doesn’t fuel you to succeed more. I’d rather succeed from the first attempt than fail for years, because the latter – contrary to popular belief – does not make me stronger or better in any way, shape, or form. This doesn’t mean that getting stuff easily like in inheriting millions is better. It only means that if Mark Zuckerberg failed for 20 years before he managed to make Facebook a success, he wouldn’t have been better or stronger than he is now. In fact, you can argue that he might have ended up being way worse than he could ever be, that is, assuming he didn’t give up or become severely depressed. In other words, Facebook would’ve never existed, and he also might have ended up being miserable because of that. Also I’m talking about what you should have in mind. Your mindset or your initial intention. Whether or not that is what takes place in reality, or whether or not you actually win or succeed is a whole different story. There’s a difference between me saying you shouldn’t fail, and me telling you that no failure ever is going to occur in the real world because of you sticking to that advice. We try to win. But if we lose we don’t give up or choose something easier that we can never fail at or lose in. And that doesn’t mean we don’t even bother trying because we might end up losing anyway. It means that is your intention from the start. You go with the intention of wanting to win and succeed. Avoiding failure doesn’t mean avoiding doing anything that is not easy enough to always win in it, not too easy to lose in or fail at, or that the impossibility of failing at or losing in it is not one hundred percent guaranteed. It just means don’t suck. It means if you attempted to do something, do your best to win at it from the first time or with the least failing attempts possible. Do your best from the beginning or else you wouldn’t even have the minimal energy needed to get you started again in the future.

I’m not telling you to quit if there’s a chance to lose. Adjusting according to your last attempt isn’t discouraged here. What is discouraged is thinking that you’ve learned that from the process of failure or losing itself. That failure made you stronger, more resilient, better, or gave you some wisdom, or experience, or whatever positive benefits or good things you try to attribute to the process of having failed a lot in the past itself. You did that through careful analysis and evaluation…etc. Not from the failure. Suppose you didn’t know any of that. Learning these things from failure would be harmful. Figuring these things out before you try is way better. Alternatively, if you already know why you failed, then that means nothing could be gained from either the loss itself or the analysis of why you failed.

I’ll give you an example. Every time you lift weights or run a little bit there’s a presumed physical or health benefit from that exercise. That doesn’t exist from the process of failure at all. It’s like saying yeah I tend to drink more water because of exercise and that’s good. But that wasn’t the physical exercise. That was drinking water and staying hydrated that gave you these extra benefits. The benefits of water do not rule out the fact that the exercise gave you benefits even if you didn’t drink anything after it. In case of failure you got the benefit from re-evaluation and considering why you failed. These are benefits that occurred due to activities that are external to the process of failure itself. Even if they both coexisted, the fact remains that none of the benefits that occurred were due to the process of failure itself.