Psst, Hey you… you’re going to fail today. Maybe you already did. Maybe you will bomb a meeting, fumble a task, or say the wrong thing to the wrong person. Hell, maybe you’ll stub your toe on the way to the bathroom and curse your existence. (That counts. Trust me.)
But guess what? None of that matters if your successes are quietly outmuscling those failures.
Here is a dirty little secret, nobody talks about how often they screw up. Social media? Highlight reels. LinkedIn? Flex city. Even your annoyingly successful friend? Yeah, they have faceplanted more times than they’ll admit. But here’s what no one tells you, getting back up is not glamorous, it’s gritty, awkward, and deeply human.
But it counts.
The magic isn’t in the win, it’s in the reset. Showing up after a mess up? That is where the real work happens. Not in the flawless execution, but in the resilience reps. Every time you bounce back (or let’s be real crawl back), you are building the kind of grit that can not be faked.
But the people who actually get somewhere aren’t the ones who avoid failure, they are the ones who let it happen, learn, and keep moving. How else are you going to know you are in the arena. The only way to never fail is to never try. If you are failing, you are doing something. That’s more than most can say.
Failure is data. Every "nope" teaches you what doesn’t work. Edison didn’t fail 1,000 times, he found 1,000 ways to not make a lightbulb. (And then he made one.)
Success is not a straight line. It is a messy graph of screw ups, small wins, and occasional breakthroughs. The goal isn’t perfection, it is progress.
At the end of the day, the only metric that matters is did my wins outweigh my losses?" Not "Did I fail?" Not "Did I look stupid?" Just: "Am I net positive?"
- Got rejected but learned how to pitch better? Win.
- Missed a deadline but identified your time wasters? Win.
- Ate three stress donuts but finally sent that scary email? Still a win.
I have a game plan, want to hear it?
Fail faster. Stop overthinking. Try. Flop. Adjust. Repeat. Fail like it’s your job. The more you do it, the less it stings. Reset faster. No post mortem pity parties. Just “What’s next?" Steal the lessons. Every failure has a takeaway even if it is just "well, that didn’t work."
Keep a victory log. Write down tiny wins. They add up, and on bad days, they’ll remind you you are not stuck. Hey even better, Track your comebacks, not just your wins. They are the real measure of progress.
The successful people you admire aren’t magical unicorns they are just people who failed, shrugged, and kept going. So fail today. Fail tomorrow. But make sure your wins, however small, are stacking the deck in your favor.
So yeah fail loudly. Fail weirdly. Fail while everyone is watching. Then get back up not because it is poetic, but because it’s progress. The magic isn’t in the flawless execution; it is in the grit workouts. The kind of strength that compounds.
That’s not failure. That’s how you build a legacy.
ღ Chi
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