How To Stop Feeling Like A Failure And Accelerate Your Progress

Hello, welcome to the Lean of Plants podcast. My name is Chelsea and if you are struggling to lose weight on a plant-based diet, then this podcast is for you. While there are thousands of books, podcasts, and resources about the benefits of a plant-based diet, the reality is that being vegan does not guarantee losing weight.

If you are feeling frustrated and confused about where to start, or you know exactly what you should be doing, but you just can't seem to rustle up enough willpower to do it, then keep listening. In this podcast you'll learn the truth about plant-based weight loss but just as importantly how to use proven methods of behavioral change to turn what you know into lifelong habits that lead to getting and staying lean. Can't wait to get started. Let's do this.

Welcome to the podcast. I'm super excited to talk to you. today because if you have ever felt like a failure if you've ever felt like you're not good enough if you've ever tried to lose weight in the past maybe you've tried for 20 years and you just haven't achieved it yet then

please keep listening because this podcast is designed for you. And what I want to talk about today is something very near to my heart. And I believe that this is the number one skill set that has allowed me to be here in front of you today speaking. into your ears in this podcast and that is how to deal with failure.

how to actually utilize failure for it to be the best teacher possible and actually allow you to become who you need to be in order to achieve the goals that you have. And right now, if you have not gotten to the things that you want to, if you have got... that you have not achieved and you have actually failed towards them, at this point failure is a roadblock.

But it doesn't have to stay that way. And if you could use failure, if failure became not this roadblock, but something that actually every time you experienced it, you could accelerate.

and get closer to your goals, then you would be unstoppable. We all would be. Because all it would mean is that the more that we were able to... fail the more we could learn the quicker we could achieve because we would know not only what works but also what doesn't what we should do more of and what we should avoid

And we can start to eliminate all of these little things that are going to hold us back and instead take the consistent right actions that would change our behaviors and allow us to become someone new.

And that's all that is. That is all achieving your goal is, is becoming someone new. It's changing into someone new. And right now, if you think about this, if you haven't achieved the goal yet, then There's a contrast with who you are today and you have to actually learn in order to grow into that person. And so what it means right now is that there's a deficit. There's a deficit between who you are and who you need to become.

And it's either that you just don't know what steps to take or that you do know what steps to take and you just haven't taken enough of them, right? It's just competency. And that's what we're going to call that gap. We're going to look at what is actually required to bridge that gap, to bridge the gap between incompetent to competent, and it's learning.

And so let's define learning for a moment. And I'm going to do this in the way that Alex Hormosey, which is one of my all-time favorite people, he defines it. And he defines it as this. Learning equals the same condition, new behavior.

And here's an example of what that could look like. I am super tired at night. I go to the mirror. I can see a tiny little blackhead or a little spot on my face. And then I pick at it. And then it causes this huge like breakout and this huge pimple on my face. Learning would be, okay. I have this pimple. It was a result of me picking at my face. Therefore, same condition, happens again the following night. But now that I know that there's a negative outcome, I just don't touch my face.

i actually put some i have like a skincare routine so that's what we would define as learning if you have the same condition and you know that it's going to it's going to lead to you getting pimples and breakouts and scars and you continue to actually

touch your face, then you haven't learned anything. You haven't changed your behavior, therefore you haven't learned. If you listen to this podcast and it changed nothing in your behavior, you haven't actually learned. Not talking from personal experience or anything like that.

But here's the thing that's really interesting is it's the feedback loop of failures as opposed to success that helps us to learn quicker and helps us to learn more accurately. Because if you don't have competency... in something if you don't understand how something works and what doesn't work then even the successes that you have are mostly flukes and and here's a little story to illustrate why the successes in the beginning are just flukes

at an event with my kids and there's this little corn toss game there where the kids have to pick up a bean-filled bag and they just have to throw it into a hole. And so obviously a child... My child has no competency in this. They don't know how to aim. They don't know how to throw. But every time that they throw and they miss, it's normal that they would miss because they have no competency, right? Normal. And then you could say, okay, so...

One out of maybe 10 times. They get the thing in the hole. And there's no rhyme or reason to it. But. At some point, if you're throwing something at a dartboard, if you're throwing this bean-filled bag at a corn toss thing, then you're going to have some success. It's not competency. It's a fluke.

And how you would gain competency in that is that you would fail many, many times. You would adjust many, many times to get to the point where you go, well, I know through many, many failures that I can throw this little... thing at the hall and I'm going to get it in.

I'm going to throw a basketball at a hoop and I know what doesn't work. Therefore, I know what does. So failure and lots of failure is really, really vital to success. I want to share a little story. This is Walt Disney. So he had many, many failures. that he ever did was this thing called Laugh-O-Grams so this is his first studio what a name like really good that that's not the one that he settled on but it actually went bankrupt so he went bankrupt in 1923

due to tons of like financial problems, like force them to shut down. Then moving on from that. This is years later, 1928. He has his kind of first like little bit of a break, which is this Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which you've probably never heard of. I had never heard of this. He loses the rights to Oswald. So he's got no key character now. And then he goes on to create this animated series, Alice Comedies. But it doesn't gain any popularity. It doesn't make any kind of significant impact.

and then even when he creates mickey mouse finally he creates mickey mouse which is an eventual success but to begin with he's faced with all these like initial difficulties like getting the characters animation funded distributed he's got all of these different people who are doubting the potential And then finally we have like this Disney empire today and it came out of failure after failure after failure. Like these are just the big ones.

You think about all the micro ones along the way where he's drawing characters and he's pitching scripts and he's doing all of these things and it's just fail, fail, fail, fail, fail. But ultimately, those failures led him to learn what works.

Which is this insane global empire of Disney that we have today. So there are two types of learning. There's probably more than this, but for this... instance we're going to say that there's two types of earning learning and the first one is what works and what doesn't so this is it didn't work i got hurt that was dumb never do it again this is something where we can say yeah there's probably a bit of a binary right or wrong to it

And so here's an example. You have a toddler who's in a kitchen. You're taking the toddler around. There's a hot stove. And you want to teach the toddler, don't touch the hot stove. So you're like, don't touch it. Don't touch it. It's hot. Hot, hot, hot. As my mom used to say to us as kids.

four younger sisters so i really remember a lot of this training around things being dangerous it was hot don't touch it it's hot and so you tell the kid don't touch the stove and then you lead them away from it and so they never touch it

And they never see for themselves what happens when they do. And so if you're kind of like a not very smart parent in that, you probably go, oh yeah, so now my kid's really, really good around hot stoves because this one time that I told them not to touch it and then I didn't let them touch it, they didn't touch it. Not many parents would then go, oh, I'm going to let my kid around a hot stove because I know that they've achieved a level of success. It's a fluke.

You can guarantee that that child left to their own devices is going to touch it again at some point. But here's what happens when they do. When they hurt themselves, and they will. We've all burnt ourselves on a stove at some point. When they hurt themselves, when they fail, is when you actually have an environment for learning. Because remember, learning equals same condition, new behavior. You're not going to touch that stove again.

You're not going to on purpose touch that stove. I've touched so many stoves since then. Not on purpose. Because you have an environment where you've actually been able to change your behavior, and that is through the vehicle of failure. And so in this instance with learning, you've got this very kind of binary idea where you go, okay, wrong, right, don't do that again. But you only realize this when you know that there's actually a wrong one.

Or you've been able to observe that and you've learned from someone else. You don't have to make all the mistakes yourself. In fact, you shouldn't. This is the worst way to go through life is to rely on your own mistakes because you can't learn fast enough if you do this. You'll never get to your goal. But everything that we're learning, all the successes that we're learning from.

are based on either our own failures or someone else's as well. We have learned what works because we've learned what hasn't worked. Predictable success exists because of someone else's failures. The reason that we can... go into a room right now and then flick on a light switch is because

Thomas Edison spent so many times failing and inventing the light bulb. The second type of learning is reps to get good. So there's some things that even if you know them to be true or to be the right way to do things. You can't actually achieve that without... many many many tries at doing it so I would say this is the the kind of difference between if you don't know how to play basketball and then you get explained that you can know really instantly that the success of basketball

is to get the ball in the hoop. Like there's a wrong or there's a right. So that's the first type of learning. But then if you actually want to play basketball, you're going to be on the team and you're going to have to suck many, many, many times. Like you're going to have to try to get the ball in the hoop. and practice getting the ball in the hoop. And most of the time you're going to fail in the beginning. So these two types of learning happen together.

You can conceptually know what to do. You can conceptually know what your meal prep should look like and what like the ideal day is. But along the way, you're going to have to put in these consistent repetitions, tons of failure to achieve that competency.

so if we actually want to accelerate learning which i think we all do because we want to accelerate results then we have to achieve more failure. If we want to accelerate competency, we have to accelerate failure. Here's another story to kind of illustrate this. Most of us have heard of Michael Jordan.

First of all, high school team. He's cut from the high school team. He's a sophomore there. He just doesn't have the skill set to be in the varsity team. But he uses that experience to improve his skills. He uses that failure. where he's not good enough yet to hone those skills. When he's in university, North Carolina, his team loses the semifinals, 1983, and then again the next year at the Olympics.

There's pretty devastating losses, but they actually push him to work harder through failure so that he can actually get better. And then he retires from basketball, 1993. So 10 years later, he retires from basketball. to play baseball struggles in the minor leagues didn't make it to the majors turned back to basketball two years later

And he often actually spoke about his failure and how it influences his success. This is a famous quote that he has. He said, I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

So he had this belief system and it's evidenced by... what actually happened in his life that his failures were the catalyst and the stepping stones to his eventual greatness so if we want to achieve these big things if we want to achieve these small things then we have to be okay with accelerated learning which requires accelerated failure

And the faster and more consistently we fail if we learn from it. So if we change our behavior, this is really, really key. Because if you don't change your behavior, then you're not learning. There's no point just failing and failing and failing and not actually changing your behavior.

There's no point just touching the hot stove over and over and over again and continuing to get burnt if at some point you don't just go, you know what, I'm not going to touch the stove anymore. So we achieve competency through failure and then learning. That is the feedback loop.

And the reason with all of this that I have the words fail fast on my office wall is because the faster we can fail, the faster we can take... immediate action towards things that we have not the skills yet to succeed in the faster that we can actually learn and grow because we have a limited time on this earth and if we want to be great

And if we want to achieve things that other people haven't, and I'm going to tell you right here, right now, losing 40 pounds, losing 30 pounds, having a normal BMI, having food freedom, these are abnormal results. They could be common, but they are not. Because we live in an environment that does not support them. So these are exceptional things to achieve.

like in and of themselves if you achieve these things you've achieved something that most people never will to the point where there are even scientists saying that diets do not work we shouldn't try them because the the rate of success is so abysmal

And the rate of success is so abysmal because it is so hard to change our view of failure. I believe that is one thing. It is so hard to find what works because we feel so bad when we see all these things that don't. And there's more that goes into this as well about behavioral change. But if we could go from failure to learning, to seeing what worked for other people and what didn't, to changing our environment, to using all these things, then...

we would be so equipped to learn the skill sets that we need in order to be the exception that actually achieved great things. And if we do that fast, we can achieve that fast. And there's some good things that we want to do. There's some great things that we want to do that we just simply don't have enough life.

To get good at them slowly enough. To achieve them in a lifetime. So those would be people like Michael Jordan. If you have a big dream like that. Like I have a big dream. I want to impact so many women. to become the hero of their own story through behavioral change. That's the vision that I have. And that dream is so big. That I just simply don't have the luxury of 100 years or 400 or 500 years where I can afford to move slowly on that and learn slowly on that because I just won't get it done.

So if I wanna get it done, I have to be failing more and more and more than other people are prepared to. So I define fail fast as to take immediate action on something you know will help you move forward. that you do not feel equipped for, that you do not have the necessary skills for, where there is a high chance of failure. Why is there a high chance of failure? Because you haven't done it yet.

Why is there a high chance that when I start a podcast and when I did start this podcast, it would suck? It did suck because I hadn't done it yet. Why is there a high chance that the first time... That you try and cook a recipe from scratch that you don't know how to do. That it's not going to be good. That you might not even taste good. Because you haven't done it before.

Why is there a high chance that when you go to the gym for the first time, you're going to pick up the wrong weights and you're going to look like a fool because you haven't done it before. So if we're going to do anything that we haven't done before, then we're going to fail at it. Like not just as a, oh, I might fail. Like it's a possibility. No, it's a probability. Why would we expect competency when we haven't done the things that competency requires, which is failures?

which is repetition. And I'm going to get into that a bit more in a minute. But I want to, before we do that, to define what failure is not. Because here's the thing I hear all the time. I hear people say, oh, I failed. You know, I didn't do this thing. I didn't do this thing. And I'm going to define that right here and right now. Failure is not... inaction failure is not procrastination failure is not giving up failure by definition requires action because if I go to a basketball game

And I watch other people play. Have I failed at basketball? Have I failed to get the winning shot? No. Because I'm not playing the game. It's only when I'm in the court and I take that shot and I miss. that I fail. Failure, by definition, requires us to be in the ring. It requires us to be on the court. We have to be taking action. And this is a very, very helpful distinction because it allows us to

differentiate between things like procrastination or just giving up in general. Like it is not failure for you to not go to the gym. You just didn't go. It was a choice to just give up. failure requires action. We need to stop saying that we failed in something that we just never tried in.

And so if we're going to be having all of these things, even right here, right now, you've probably got some kind of visceral reaction. If you use this word and this terminology, oh, I failed lots, for actually those times that you've given up, stick around.

Because what we're going to do is we're going to make it easier for you to stop giving up. Because if you can stop giving up so easily, if you can minimize why you give up. So that it's easier for you to take action. Then you would be more likely to succeed. Then you'd actually get in the ring. And then you'd actually be in the ring of failure. Which would be positive because then you could learn from it. So I'm not scared of failure. I'm scared of inaction. Because inaction is what...

I can't grow from. Inaction means that I have no ability to learn because there's no ability to know what behavior to change. Whereas if I fail, then I can learn those things. Here's another story. Jeff Bezos. I think most of us have heard of him. Founder of Amazon. massive setbacks in his life first venture absolute failure he started something called amazon's bookstore before amazon was a success

Had to close it down. Did not succeed. Started fresh. And then he had all these initial struggles with Amazon. Massively high operating costs. Low sales. So many people were skeptical about online shopping. Made it super difficult for him to grow. Then dot-com bubble burst. So in the 90s and 2000s, the dot-com bubble led to a huge drop in Amazon stock price. So there was a lot of people at this time that just thought that it wasn't actually going to succeed long term. And then...

2014, they launched something called the Fire Phone. Doesn't attract any customers. They discontinue it. They spent like millions on this thing. I don't even know if it could be billions. I can't remember. It was a lot. Huge setback for his tech ambitions. And I... really, really distinctly remember, he's basically asked about this. Bezos has asked about that. And he...

is so positive about that experience where he completely failed with this phone that they tried to launch. I think they tried to compete with the iPhone at this time because he learned from it. And then that was a key component that went... That helped them to go on to create the Kindle. And then also to go on to create. I think it's Alexa. I think that's the Amazon one.

um so they they ended up actually being able to use that and it ended up having like millions of dollars billions of dollars like this guy's like the richest guy in the world i'm pretty sure i think maybe maybe elon musk is now richer i think elon musk is now richer But he actually has spoken a lot about his failures. And he said this, if you're not failing, you're not innovating enough. So he has this massive belief that failure is a natural part.

of trying new things and it's essential for growth and success. And you're going to see this with any really, really successful person. They just see failure very differently.

So if failure is required to succeed, we can kind of start to get a bit of a gauge that this is just truth. And we can see it even in just our own lives. If you think about learning to read as a child. Where you go from not even knowing the ABCs. To then being able to comprehend. Not just like way more advanced literature. Like maybe you're reading Dickens now. I like Dickens.

But also being able to read what you needed to learn your job. To be able to read what you needed to do on your phone to get to this podcast. To be able to read and understand and comprehend signs as you're going through. Like you're driving around in your car.

Like we use reading for so many things. We're so competent in reading. It unlocks so much for us. But there was one point in life where you didn't even know your ABCs. And the only way that you now have this competency is that you learnt through failure. You had some successes along the way, obviously, but you had just as many, if not more failures until you had achieved.

a level of like, this was normal. This is, I know how to do this. I know how to avoid the failures because I've made them so many times and now I know what success looks like and I can score every time. or nine times out of 10. So I think we just, on some level, we just have to accept that failure is a part of success. And if you don't want to accept that right now, then I think it's extremely naive, but that's fine. You do whatever you want to do, but probably keep...

Probably don't keep listening to this podcast because if you don't want to change your view of failure, then you're never going to achieve the things that you want to achieve. So there's not really any point listening on. But if you do, if you are going to go, hey.

If failure is required to succeed, then I probably want to change my view of it. Then I'm going to show you exactly how to do that. And this is going to be very uncomfortable from here on out. All right. I'm just warning you. I'm going to trigger some people about their views of failure.

So if you don't want to be triggered by things and if you want to stay the same, turn this off right now. This is a concept that I've only really just grasped upon and been able to articulate. I'm still formulating with some of this. But I've tested it in quite a few scenarios. And I do believe that this is the core of it. But I could be wrong. Okay. So take all of this with a grain of salt.

But any kind of association that we have with negative emotions is because we have some kind of positive identity for it. So let me explain what I mean by that because then it's going to help us to understand this concept a bit more. And I'll say it again, any kind of negative emotions that we have around something is because of an identity that we hold.

And here's what I mean. Let's say you have two people. Person A is having a terrible day. Their kids have screamed at them. Their husband is not happy. They've had this really hard day at work. They're just spent. They're spent. They go into a coffee shop. After work, get a coffee. They got to get through the night, man. It's going to be a rough night. It's been a rough day. It's going to be an even rougher night. And because they're short and because they're tired.

They're unkind to the barista. They're snappy. They're like, why is my order taking so long? And later on, as they're driving away, they feel absolutely terrible. They feel like, oh my goodness, I'm not the person that's... that's terrible to service people like what is this this is like how could you do that and they feel just like absolutely crap why does that person feel that way because ultimately that behavior or that that emotion

first of all the behavior the behavior is not in line with who they think they are they believe that they are kind they believe that they are reasonable and so when they experience something that contradicts that that failure feels negative because it's pointing that they're out of alignment with their identity so ultimately when you think about that feeling that feeling itself is actually probably a positive thing it's positive

to feel negative and feel kind of crappy that you were bad or you were really terrible to the barista? What does it indicate? If you feel bad... that you spoke unkindly to a service person, it probably is an indication that you're actually a pretty decent kind of human being, that you failed on that. You probably should feel bad for that failure, right? Can we all agree on that? Because if you think about it, person B, they're not having a bad day. They go in a coffee shop.

They're unkind. They're really short. They're really mean to the breast. They're like, oh, how can you? You totally mucked this up. Why are you so slow? This is terrible service. I absolutely hate it here. And then later on, they feel no remorse. They feel nothing. They don't feel bad one ounce. And the friend that they're with, they're like, how could you? Man, you're a dick to that person. And they're like, yeah, no. They deserve to be treated in that way. I am owed a certain level of service.

But the other thing that you're going to understand about this is that This person, their behavior is still aligned with their identity. So maybe their identity is that they have this kind of self-importance. Maybe they have this feeling of like the world is out to get them. It's a dog-eat-dog-eat world. And I expect this kind of...

behavior to me where I want people to be just really efficient and onto it. And I don't expect people to be good to me because I'm not good to other people and no one's good to me. So this is why should I be good to other people?

it's still in alignment with their behavior and their identity. The feelings that we have are always in line with the identities that we hold. So in both instances... The feelings associated. One of them feels like they failed. Because they mucked up. One of them had exactly the same behavior. They don't feel like they failed. Ultimately both of these people. Here's the thing that's crazy about this. They both believe their identity is good.

And this concept comes from many, many things. James Clear talks about it in his book, Atomic Habits, that we are always in line with the identity that we have. re-listening to How to Win Friends and Influence People for the second time. And it's so fascinating because people always believe that their motives are good. They always believe that there is...

maybe not that their motives are good, but they always have some justification for their actions that is in line with their identity. And if you look at even the most hardened criminals, they have reasons why they think that what they did was right. they this person deserved it or like I was doing what was right for like society or anything like that like they they no one thinks they have bad motives like this is the crazy thing

Everyone thinks that they have good reasons for doing things, even if objectively we can say, no, you're a terrorist society. You should be locked up. There's this.

last little story, last little piece of the kind of Harry Potter tie-up that happens in the last book, which is The Deathly Hallows. And Harry is... basically about to defeat Voldemort he knows that he's about to defeat Voldemort spoilers here Voldemort thinks he's gonna win and it's very very fascinating because the thing that Harry asks him is he's like

I've seen what you become. Try for some remorse. And it throws Voldemort. Because Harry is asking Voldemort. This evil dude of the whole series. To try to feel bad. He's saying the way that you have some redemption. Is that you try to feel bad. Because that feeling of feeling remorse. Which would be a negative feeling. It would be feeling like really crappy.

Would be a good sign. It would mean that maybe deep down. There was something actually positive. And why this matters. He doesn't by the way. He doesn't drive for any remorse. He has no remorse for all the murders he's committed. This horrible guy. But here's the thing and why this matters is the reason that we feel bad about failure is that deep down we have a positive identity tie to why we are justified in that. I'm going to say it again.

The reason we feel bad about failure or fear of failure is because deep down we have a positive identity tie, something that we believe strongly about why failure is negative. And here's some of the things that it could be. We feel bad when we fail because we've let someone down. Like that's probably a good thing to feel, right? We feel bad when we fail because we feel like we should have known better. That we're better than that. Okay? So it would be negative. If we're better than that...

then failure is negative. We believe ourselves as intelligent. Therefore, if we fail, it's a sign of being dumb. We have high standards for ourselves. Therefore, when we don't meet those standards, like it's probably good that we feel like a failure, right? So we see ourselves as competent. So therefore failure is a sign that we're not. So our negative feelings and emotions around failure is because we fundamentally think that those things should be felt.

That we have a justification in feeling like the feelings of failure are valid. We think the feelings of failure are valid and that there is a good reason for them. Because letting people down is bad. Because not being competent is bad.

and every single person that i talk to who has a negative view of failure when i talk to them and i talk through that they have a fundamentally positive identity around why they are justified to feel that way even if they don't know it because we never admit to here and here's why here's like another reason that we can say that we know this to be true no one ever admits things that they're actually

like are actually genuinely crappy about themselves. We can be like, oh, like I feel bad about failing. And it's kind of like it actually admits something good about ourselves, but that we have standards, right?

If we feel bad about being shouting at our kids, it means that we're actually a good mom. If you don't feel bad about shouting at your kids, then you're probably like really not a good mom. No one actually says, you know what? I hate failure because I have such a big ego that it's bruised when I don't live up to it.

No one says, oh, I'm so prideful that the moment that like I get exposed in something that I can't actually do, that people think I can do, that's why I feel bad. No one says, oh, like I'm so, so selfish. And that's why I was upset that. this person was late because i'm so selfish we more say things like oh i'm impatient we very rarely actually say things that are like genuinely can only be construed of negative

Even the negative things we say about ourselves, we can somewhat construe as positive a lot of the time. This is really, really funny and kind of crazy. No one really admits that they're prideful. No one really admits that they're arrogant. No one really wants to admit that they're really selfish. No one really wants to admit that they're like a coward. Even if these things are true, we typically will say things like, I'm impatient. I don't like failure. I'm a perfectionist.

They're things that we, even though we can say, we kind of pretend that we think they're negative, we have some kind of positive association with them because we have some kind of positive identity tie. And so therefore we're justified in feeling those things.

So if we want to start feeling differently about failure, we can actually change what that means for our identity and we can examine whether those things are true. So what I really want to examine first is this feeling of failure.

or feelings negatively around failure pointing to something positive, does it actually point to something positive? Or have we just construed that? Have we just created meaning? Because our brains are meaning machines. We're always looking for, how does this feeling mean this? When I feel bad about yelling at my kids, it means that I'm a good mom. When I feel remorse for something dumb that I've done, it means that I'm a good person.

When I feel like I've mucked up and I feel like failure and I feel shame around that, it actually means that I want to do a good job, therefore good. So we're creating all these meanings all the time, but they're not actually necessarily true. They're just meanings. that we've created. They're just associations. They're just our brains trying to recognize patterns because that's what our brains do.

And I'm going to suggest something that I think is going to annoy and piss off a lot of people, and that is that feeling bad for failure masquerades as humility when it's actually truly arrogant. And I can admit that freely about myself. Because... If everyone else in the world can fail as a normal human experience, if Bezos can fail, if Michael Jordan can fail, if Walt Disney can fail, and that's a normal part of their success in a human experience.

then what kind of inflated ego do I have that I would presume to see myself differently? If I feel really bad when I try something for the first time, let's say like I try to change my diet. And I'm going really good and I've got like a ton of motivation. And then I go out to dinner and I didn't prepare.

And now I'm just eating everything off the menu. And I feel like terrible when I come home. Like, why did I fail? You should know better. You shouldn't do this. What kind of arrogance is that? That I think that I could or should know better. When I've never achieved competency in this, when I've never failed enough and I've never learned enough to deal with the situation, why should I know differently if I haven't done my time?

If a child needs years of struggling through verbs to learn to read. If an athlete takes hundreds of missed shots for every one goal. If a business person has thousands of failures and stumbles along to achieve success. What kind of... arrogant ass am i that i fail once or twice or 10 times but i have this an expectation that i should have succeeded isn't that kind of crazy like why do i have this kind of self-importance

that I would even presume to succeed and I would be surprised when I don't. Isn't that kind of the definition of arrogance? And so I truly believe, and this is why I have a very visceral response to my own response around failure for this reason. If you've got kids listening, this would probably be the time to make them not listen.

Because I would actually suggest that indulging in feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing due to failure is like mental masturbation. It's this ego stroking again and again and it serves no one. Because if we define arrogance as inflated self-importance and self-centeredness, then it's arrogant to choose to wallow. Because it's arrogant to see your inadequacies as anything other than normal. Because you...

And I are not special. We are not owed success. We are not owed ease. We are not some infallible God figure that we are immune to sucking. You do suck. I do suck because I haven't done the reps yet. I haven't done my time yet. You haven't done your time yet. If you don't have competency where you can go through something and you don't need motivation, you don't need the great circumstances, you can just shoot the shot and you can get it every single time.

If you haven't gotten to that level of competency yet because you haven't failed and you haven't learned enough and you haven't modified your behavior enough, then why would you possibly get upset when you don't do that? Why would you possibly think that you could achieve that? Without the required effort. Without the required sacrifice. Without the required time needed to achieve that. When everyone else on the planet has had to do that if they wanted to be competent.

If you haven't shot enough shots for the goal to look effortless, then why are you surprised when you miss? You suck. Not only is that okay, not only is that normal, not only is it valid to suck. Like you don't have to be good. Here's the thing. You won't be good. You don't have to be good. It's actually positive because it's the first step to get better. And I truly believe the way that we move past this is that we have to reset our expectations about success and firmly drag them into reality.

If not arrogance that we are owed success without massive failure, then at the very least, it's naive. If we don't think that failure is the prerequisite for success, then we probably just haven't read enough works of the greats. We haven't understood enough of the trial and error of successful people throughout history. We haven't looked at the inputs that all the people that we're saying, oh, like it looks easy for them. Well, they didn't have to fail like I do.

have actually done because anyone who's succeeded more than you has failed more than you. If you don't believe that, it's naive. I'm sorry. We need to look at the practices of athletes. We need to look at our own experiences and growth from childhood, learning to walk, talk, ride a bike or read. Recognise it is only failure that allowed us to be where we are today.

Success is just failure after failure and learning and modifying and then doing that over and over again. So once we accept that failure and more of it is required to achieve great things, then to feel bad about it is... actually succumbing to the arrogance that we have inside. To feel terrible, to have internal shame is a valid reason to give up, is to admit arrogance. Because why do we get to give up when we feel crappy?

Like, are we so special that we can feel it's like so hard. Like I hear people say this all the time. I feel, I just feel so bad when I fail. Like, yeah, me too.

Well, I mean, I used to. I feel this bad now because feelings follow beliefs. They really, really do. So much on this. Side quest on this. I don't think I have a hard life. I used to. My husband has MS. He's got a degenerative condition. It affects our entire life. I've seen him go from first year of our marriage, really me happy-go-lucky, thinking I had all the good things in life planned out, to in that first six months, him being diagnosed.

with primary progressive ms not even relapsing remitting where there's kind of breaks from it consistent steady He's in a wheelchair now. Had to quit his job. All these different things. Not only that, finding out that I was pregnant with her first daughter when I really didn't want to be. That was not in the plan. It was not something that I wanted to have happen. And me being extremely resistant to that.

for probably two years even after she was born where every time it got hard i was like i never chose this i was like peace i'm out i didn't want this but i was still in it like i wasn't gonna like leave my kid at the orphanage door like there was no orphanage door i wasn't gonna do that But that's how I felt. That's the level of cop-out that I had in that situation.

And it's kind of wild now where I look at my life and I look at so many other good things. ACL reconstruction that I've just had where I really can't even walk properly. And it's wild to me to think that like, I don't think I have a hard life. I don't think that I have a bad life. I don't think. that like i don't use the word stress anymore i completely eliminated the word stress from my vocabulary apart from like here you just heard me say it twice i don't say about myself i'm stressed

Never say it. I can't believe, I'm not saying that, but to say that I'm better than anyone, I'm really not. Like, I know that I'm really not, which is why I can deal with failure so much better than I used to. Because I'm like, I'm not all that. I don't expect all that. That's the key difference. We'll get into that in a minute.

But it's crazy to me how much our feelings can change when our mindset changes. When our... internal biases and our worldview starts to shift and this is why I think that this is so powerful as a reframe to reframe even our feelings around failure and why we feel failure and why we feel so crappy about it

As like really just that we expect something more from ourselves than what would be reasonable for anyone else. Which again, like if we're going to define terms and we're going to define arrogance as inflated ego, then that is the definition of inflated ego.

that what's good for someone else is not good enough for us. And if we're going to allow ourselves to think about that and to wallow in that, to experience all those feelings, then it's almost like we're saying, well, hey, I'm better than other people.

Because I shouldn't have to go through these feelings even though they did. I've been through all those feelings of failure. Especially around weight loss. Like I can experience some of those things a whole lot easier now. Because I've done my time. And now I'm failing on even much greater levels than that. I'm failing where other people's livelihoods are at stake now. Like the kind of decisions that I make now and having a business and having an audience.

The stakes are so much higher, but I'm still failing. And I'm feeling better about those failures now than I did when the stakes were low, which was like I didn't eat my vegetables properly. Or I missed a workout where I said that I was going to go and then I didn't do it. Which even if you think about failure, we would say, okay, well, that's not even failure. I didn't even try. I failed to try. Maybe we'll say it that way. I had an intention and I didn't follow through on it.

We don't like to try things that are new. Like if we go specifically just into this, fear of failure. Because fear of failure is a very interesting one. We don't want to try something new because... If there's a likelihood that we fail in that, then it would expose us. When you sit back and don't try, we can kind of kid ourselves then we're better than we actually are.

When you put your hand up and answer the question wrong, you expose that you're lacking. When you sit back and say nothing, you can convince yourself that you are better. You're going to feel more feelings of failure if you're trying to lose weight.

than if you don't try. Like if you're not trying to lose weight, if you're like, you know what, I'm happy to gain weight. I'm happy to be like whatever size I'm at. Like I can be healthy at any size. If you're happy to feel that and you believe that, you're not going to feel like you're failing.

Because you're not trying. If you're not trying to run a marathon, you're not going to feel like a failure when you don't get out the door. You're only going to feel like you're failing when you have an expectation that you should be doing something differently. The very definition of feeling like a failure or feeling failure like you're failing is because you're trying to do something. And the reason that so many people don't like that.

And the reason that it's so much easier to sit on the sidelines and criticize the people that do actually put their hand up, that do try, why it's so much easier to be a referee from the couch at the TV than it is to be an actual player. is that when we actually do the thing, we expose that we don't do it well. When we're not trying to do it, we can kind of convince ourselves, well, if I was going to do it, I would be great.

There's this really funny line. It's the Pride and Prejudice movie. I really like the one of Keira Knightley. My family always says this. This lady, Catherine de Bourgh, I think her name is. And she's like, I would have been a great musician had I ever learned.

We can convince ourselves. We can convince ourselves that we could be good if we had ever tried. It's like, you didn't try, so you suck. But even if you did try, you probably suck, but that's okay because you don't have competency yet. So it's through making effort that we show ourselves that we're not there. We're not competent yet.

But why do we need to protect that? Like, this is the real question. The real question is, why would it matter if we expose that we suck and that we can't do it yet? It's ego. It's just ego. It's just that we're just a bit arrogant. And if you think about this way, my dad said this to me the other day out of context. And he said, at the end of the day, what are we except transient living organisms in a malevolent cosmos doing our best?

And I think whatever you believe about life, where we come from, I believe that we're created beings. I believe that there's a loving God. Said that and someone didn't like that on the podcast. That's just what I believe, right? But whatever you believe about the world.

We can probably all agree that you enter this world without much and then you leave it pretty much the same. Like you can't take anything with you. So if we enter the world with nothing, if we enter the world knowing nothing, not achieving anything. naked is the day we are born, then this expectation that we should be more than we are, when we actually examine that, is simply not accurate. We're not special. We just are.

It doesn't matter if we suck at things because I have no expectation that I wouldn't. I'm not immune from sucking from things any more than I am immune from aging or death.

Why I like this so much and why it's such a helpful reframe for me is that if I can construe the feelings around failure and my fear of failure is arrogance, then I have a much more visceral... emotive response to trying to avoid those feelings and i can actually reframe those feelings a lot easier than if i have them tied to a positive emotion because if i tie my feelings of failure around like being a good person because i should be better

then I don't actually have any motivation to change that. It's going to be very, very hard to change that because ultimately that's a positive feeling.

It's a negative feeling associated with a positive identity. Whereas if I have a negative feeling associated with a negative identity, then I'm going to be motivated to try and change that. Change those feelings. It's like if you watch a movie and... you're crying about like the storyline because someone that's sad and it's exposing that you are a compassionate empathetic person you

You don't want to change that feeling because you're like, well, that is part of what makes me who I am. I'm an empathetic person. We're going to have no motivation to change that. And we probably shouldn't because that's like a good thing to feel. We don't want to be psychopaths, right? So we don't want to stem those emotions because those are emotions while sad and while we would say kind of negative. are actually indications of good things. But if we can construe those differently...

If we're kind of like Harry and we're saying to Voldemort, try for a semblance of remorse. If you're watching a negative, if you're feeling like nothing, let's say it this way, if you're feeling nothing and you're watching the saddest thing in the world, you probably should try for some remorse.

So if we're feeling feelings of... I feel like I'm justified in feeling bad about fear of failure or the failure that I experience, then it's going to be easier to change those feelings if you accept that it's arrogance and ego than it is if you still hold on to it being positive.

Why this is is that we're more motivated by avoidance and pain than we are by gain. It's the same kind of idea if you think about a mouse chasing the cheese, mouse going after the cheese. Mouse is kind of motivated to get the cheese if it's hungry enough. But what if there's a cat? The mouse is going to run from the cat. So this is us avoiding pain. We're just way better at doing it. So if I construct moving on from this fear and

feelings of failure and all of these things around failure as not even benign. Like they're not even like, they're not positive. They're not benign. They're actually bad. They're arrogant.

then I have a very visceral response to not being arrogant. I do not want to be arrogant. I don't care about being competent. I just don't want to be a dick. I don't want to be an arrogant dick, right? So if I define if you're... of failure and feelings of failure as arrogance and feeling negatively about failure as arrogance and inflated ego then when i do experience those things it's good i can instantly feel like oh i feel like a failure wait wait wait

I feel like that's bad but now I can actually go that's good because it meant that I tried something and I exposed that I wasn't good and that means that I'm not arrogant. So it's really interesting because by changing the definition of those feelings...

as now positive is now as a token of me actually being like hey i tried something and i showed everyone that i sucked i put my hand up and i i volunteered for something and then i made a fool of myself and then we can go well now hey like i feel bad about that hey wait wait a minute Now I actually feel good. Like that was great. Well done. Like high five. Like amazing. Like you suck. Like well done. Like you failed. You tried. Fail fast. Like go for it. Then even in the initial feeling of like.

oh, this is a really negative emotion. I feel really, really bad. That turns around very, very quickly where you start to feel neutral or even positive about it because you've changed the meaning of it. This is the craziest thing. This is like...

This unlocked everything for me when I realized that we could change the meaning of our feelings, not just our actions. So I used to live life on hard mode. And I would say only up until about six months ago did I start to understand this. So about six months ago, I started to understand that hard mode...

is to feel feelings and then act in spite of them. Like screw your mood, follow the plan, feelings don't matter. I still believe an element of that. But what's even far more powerful than that is not only changing your... behavior you can change your feelings based on what you decide your feelings mean that's when things start to get so much easier and you can you almost have the cheat code for life because now you start to actually change the meanings

which means that you don't have the negative feelings in the same way or they mean different things and therefore the meaning of them changes and then you don't feel them as negative anymore and then it's actually easier for you to act in a way that is in accordance with who you want to be because you're not trying, you're not doing it in spite of negativity. You're actually doing it based on like feeling good.

Which is great. Like it's great. This is such interesting, crazy stuff. So how does this work if you're going, well, you know, what if people think that I'm not good enough? What if like I try something and I fail and I, you know, people, I let people down. Well, good. Because. If you trying would result in you letting people down and you showing that you're not good at something, then that's good. It's good to expose that because if not, you're really just protecting a fallacy anyway.

aren't you? Because you're not good. Like if you can't do that predictably in the scenario, then it's probably not a good idea for everyone to think that you can, right? It's kind of like it's pride and ego to say, well, I don't want these people to see that I fail.

I don't want these people to think that I'm not good enough. What if we said instead, we're like, yeah, I'm not good enough. I've got nothing to hide here. Like, this is just the truth. I'm not good enough. I can get better. I can learn. I can grow. And I will.

It's not a cop-out. It's not like I'm going to stay stuck because I'm not good enough. It's like, I'm not good enough yet. But I will learn and grow. Because I've seen so many friends. Here's another little story to illustrate this. I know so... Many girls. That's an exaggeration. It's not true. I know some girls. And we'll go to the skate park. Friends of mine. And they skate at a very minimal level. Beginner level. As do I.

And when we're there, we've got this huge opportunity to get better. We can hop on the board. We can have fun. But because there's 10-year-old boys there, because there's parents, because there's other adults that actually skate well, they won't try.

Why? Because it would expose that they're not good. Because if you're on the sidelines and you're holding a ball, a board, no one knows you're not good. You could just be waiting and watching. You could be amazing. It's not true, but you can kind of like let people fill in the blanks with that.

It's kind of like you're protecting this identity where you go, well, people can think whatever they want, but at least I'm not going to hop on and prove that I actually just don't know what I'm doing. You're kind of like you're protecting this identity from that you don't suck and that it's valid.

but it's not because you do. And part of my, part of the reason that I think like this is so insidious that we have this, such this visceral response to feelings of failure and, and on all these things, it doesn't really matter. Like, yeah, you're going to fail because you suck.

Right? Like, you're not good enough yet. Move on. Fine. It's like, it doesn't matter. You're just trying to do your best. You're going to get better. You're going to learn. That's fine. Unless you just decide not to fail and then you will never learn.

That's fine too. You do you. Me, myself and I, I fell fast on my wall and I'm going to do a whole lot more of it. So you can expect a whole lot more. And if you hate this podcast episode and you think I failed here, well then great. Awesome. I'll just learn from it. Moving on. We've been taught from a very very young age that success is good and failure is bad. We are rewarded for our successes even when they are flukes. You think about a child.

Or even when they're like, no one even believes that they're true. Like you think about child like starts doing some kind of sport for the first time. They're not very good, but they hit a few shots. The moment that they do, the adults are like, yeah, like, well done. You're amazing. You're natural. You're a genius. We start to teach kids from a very young age that success is positive. Outcomes are positive. If you don't succeed, you're either ignored.

Or it's negative. And we get very rewarded. We get rewarded in terms of like immediate positive feedback. So we want to do more of those things. We want to do less that avoids that. So if you are good at something and... or you appear to be good at something and you get praised for that thing, then you're going to not want to try the things that you would not be good at because you would not get praised for them.

And you see this all the time. I taught an art class in elementary-type level school for probably a term. It wasn't very long. And I just come back from learning about. like conceptual art and I was like really into just trying to get people to divergently think and creativity and I come into the school setting I'm a homeschool weirdo by the way if you couldn't figure that out come into the school setting and

I'm with eight-year-olds and I'm asking them to think about things and to give things a go and a draw. And I would say probably eight out of the 10 kids that were there didn't even want to try because they knew that they weren't good. And there was one girl in the class who was actually quite technically skilled because she'd done a lot of practice. She didn't really...

She didn't really have a skill set of thinking conceptually. She wasn't like an artist, but she could, in terms of what I would define as an artist, her art wasn't interesting, but it was technically good.

And so because that art, though, had been rewarded so many times, the teacher would literally come in and be like, wow, darling, look at Susie. Susie's art is amazing. Do like this. And she'd put it up on the wall. And then all the other kids didn't even want to try because they knew that they couldn't be as good as Susie.

And I was so sad. Oh man, I was heartbroken in this. I was so heartbroken because I was like, how can you succeed in life if you're scared to try? If you're so scared of failure at eight years old. That in a benign art class where you're just there to have fun, you wouldn't even put pen to paper because you already feel like a failure before even trying. And you've got so much negativity associated with failure. Like, how can you do anything? It's not good.

We do this to our kids. Like I'm guilty of it. We've had it done to us. But the cool thing is right here right now. As you're listening to this podcast. And even if you've had all of this. Where you are so scared of failure. You are so scared of exposing that you are not good. You are so scared to try.

You're so scared to suck. And that every time that you do, you feel like it is like the worst feeling in the world. That can be true. But what can also be true is that you can change the definition of that. And you can train yourself to think and believe differently. It takes time and it takes effort and it takes repetition. And guess what else it takes? This is very meta. It takes failure. But you can do it. I have done it. And any successful person has done their time.

This is the boring work. They have done it too. So when we need to change that narrative for ourselves, we need to rewrite the definition of failure. You can't go back in time and change the way that your teachers and your parents... rewarded success and punished failure but you can do that for yourself today and we have this expectation and it stems from all the stuff we've done in childhood we have this expectation that

people can be naturals at things or that people can just do things. And there is no data to support this. You can look at all these famous people that achieved amazing things. You can recognize patterns. And you can see that it really just is lots and lots more failure. We can learn from the failings of others. We can see that failure is the prerequisite for success. We don't have to like it. We don't have to believe it like viscerally, but we can understand that it is true.

And we can change the definition. And so when I'm at the gym now, this is just like kind of the hope of it. Like my definition of failure and success is so different to what it used to be that I see success when I fail. So I see success as if I'm doing pull-ups, it's not when I PB. It's not when I do more pull-ups than what I normally can do. It's when I struggle so much on my last rep that I can't even get up.

I can't even make it because if I know that I've gotten to the point where I'm struggling for like seconds and seconds and I can't even move a little, a little millimeter and I'm just struggling and I'm like exerting so much effort and I just truly, no matter how much I try, cannot. get that last little bit up. When I get to failure,

That is my definition of success because that means that I push myself to I don't have anything left. Because at that moment, when you get to failure in the gym is when you start to see muscle growth. You have to actually get to that point. or very close to that point very often, in order to...

And so I now have this kind of theory about why there's some people who accelerate so much faster and can achieve so much at the gym where other people can do kind of similar workouts for years and years and not see the same results. truly believe that the people who see phenomenal results are just able to mentally

get themselves to that point where they can like make themselves get to failure and they can have that truer understanding of what failure looks like because then they can actually like build muscle. They can reach high, I never can say this word. I fail at it. Hypertrophy. I looked it up. I can't even. I struggle with this word. I would just need to practice that a lot more time. I need to fail a whole lot more. They can get their muscles to that point of growth.

So my definition of avoiding arrogance is now and also just accepting that I'm not special is... Now that I really just success for me is not avoiding failure or not even succeeding. Success for me now is I can try things. So I see that as success and I can accelerate learning. So my ability to embrace failure head on is.

What I see as success. So I've now changed the definition of that in my mind. And I had like a big failure the other day. Something happened. And I was kind of hearing about some stuff that was going on. And something that I just really failed in. To me, I had fouled in as a leader.

And I had this kind of initial reaction to this kind of feeling of failure where my heart started to race. I started to feel terrible. I was like, oh, no, I haven't succeeded. And it was interesting because very, very quickly that feeling. my self-talk kicked in where I've changed the definition of this and I was like come on like you you're really gonna feel bad about this like what you're really gonna be so arrogant that

These people that you respect. I have so much respect for someone called Leila Hormozy. And I've listened to so many of her podcasts about leadership. And I really admire her as a person. And I know that she's learned all of these lessons. The hard lessons through so much more fast.

than what I've experienced and so I was very quickly able to go like Charles like do you really think you're better than Layla like do you really think that you could not have experienced these kind of failures in the past or hundreds of them like you this is like maybe your second maybe your third in terms of this kind of failure? Do you really think you're better than Layla that you would be immune from that without the reps?

no, I don't think I'm better than Layla. I look up to her. I think she's amazing. So therefore it's just kind of minimal. It's like, oh yeah, of course I'm going to fail. Like, duh, I haven't done this much. And so instantly that kind of visceral reaction went from like, oh, I feel, you know, I feel bad.

to being like, I feel neutral, which is kind of crazy because then you're in a good state to actually learn. Because when you feel bad, here's the kicker, when you feel bad, it robs you of your ability to change your behavior.

Feeling bad robs you of your energy to change. So you don't wanna be in a state of feeling bad. You actually wanna be in a state of feeling good or feeling neutral about things. So how do we do that? The goal here is to progress. And if progress is not from success after success, then the goal is to progress and become the kind of person that can fail time and time again and then use that to grow more.

Who you become through failure and learning is what determines your success. Your ability to deal with failure, your ability to embrace it head on, your ability to redefine it like Bezos did. If you're not failing enough, you're not innovating. Massively redefined what failure looks like.

for Amazon I think we can say that they're probably pretty successful so if our definition is not the success that we see of the thing itself that our definition of success is our ability to go from failure to failure without any lack of

loss of enthusiasm, like Churchill says, if we define success that way, then we can become the kind of people that can really achieve anything that we want to. And even the way that I see this business and what I'm doing here is... i have so much more confidence in myself that it's not confidence in my success it's now confidence and that i've failed

a reasonable amount of times at things and I've been able to survive those failures and come back stronger from those failures that even if I fail big here, even if everything goes away, I know that I can build it up again.

So how do we practically do that and start to rewire our brain? So here's some of the ways. I've written down four things. Number one, accept failure as a mandatory and positive part of learning. We have to accept this. If you haven't at this point, then... I don't know what I can tell you. You're just not reading enough like literature of the greats. I think that's really what it is. Except more success means more failure. You get points on the board for failing.

You get points on the board for trying. We can say it that way. Try to fail more. You get points on the board for trying. Okay. I literally high five myself. I try something that I think I'm going to fail at. At the skate park. I'm like. Heck yeah Charles. Like amazing. Well done.

all right like had a big failure the other day uh this is even another one was listening to um like something that i i hadn't taught someone properly this is my husband nick i was listening i'm not gonna bag on my team i'm not gonna bag on nick listening to something that he was saying

And it was something that I would kind of like taught him to say. He does some work for us in the business as well. And I was like, oh, damn. Like, I really mucked up here. I really failed. I should have taught him better. And then I was able to instantly go. I got points on the board for kind of trying, okay? And I was able to reframe that.

Because it meant it was indicative. Like me failing in this. Him failing in this. Was indicative that he was trying. That I was trying. So it was a positive thing overall. Number two. When you're triggered by fear of failure. Change the decision of success. of a successful outcome to just trying immediately. So not a fluke success. So this is why I have failed faster because I can go, well, if I try to do something and it's like an abysmal failure, I still succeed because I tried.

If I like launch a podcast and I had this idea and I, you know, I want to give it a go or I launch a YouTube video or. I get something out there. My definition is not the success of the thing itself. My definition is I didn't want to do it. I felt like I was going to fail, but I did it anyway. Then I actually... win, I win or learn. There's no kind of feeling of failure associated with that because my definition wasn't ever success to begin with. Because I've changed the game.

Number three, when you try and then you fail and you feel terrible for it, use it as a trigger to remind yourself that that is the measure of success because you tried. It is better to try. So procrastination... Not moving because you want it to be perfect. All of these things. If you don't take a move because you don't think it's going to be perfect when you do, then that's failure. That's not... positive that's arrogance right there but if you don't know how to do it

You don't know how to ask someone how to make compliant food for you at a restaurant. You don't know how to talk to your spouse about wanting to change your diet. You don't know how to talk to your kids about it. You don't know what food to make or how to meal prep properly. And you try it. If you change...

your definition of like I succeeded because I tried and it sucked and you use those feelings as a trigger to measure success then it's now positive not negative and but then you can remind yourself as well when you start to feel feelings of failure So I've had this like so much this week where I've like started to feel feelings of failure. And I'm like, no, like if I indulge in that, if I let myself continue down this kind of.

view of failure then it means that i'm better than i think i'm better than others and that's not valid so why would i do that like and then it just starts to be very minimalized so i'm starting to use the trigger even of the negative emotions as a trigger to have this mental exercise of am i better than others

No. Okay. Therefore, is it justified that I thought I would succeed? No. Therefore, is failure okay? Yes. Therefore, am I feeling like I'm failing? Is that like valid? Is it valid for me to feel all this like so bad about it? No, because I should have expected it. Okay. So if I should have expected it and I'm just going to learn.

from it then ultimately it's not bad done and then i just kind of move on with my life number four minimize those feelings of fat it's kind of like we've done by that exercise but minimizing it because it's a part of the journey asking yourself how you can learn and grow failure is positive if we learn from it failure is amazing if it changes our behavior and most of the time

Failure is actually better at getting us to change our behavior. Like I would say 100% of the time. It's better at getting us to change our behavior than even successes. Not 100% of the time. All the time. So some of the words that I use to do this is... is as follows. Charles, this feeling is what everyone I admire has been through more. They've done more of this than me and it means I'm on the right path.

Yay, you failed. Amazing. Like you feel terrible right now. It means that you did something that you weren't good at, which means that you're on a path of growth. There's a good sign. Okay, good sign. Pain is good here. Okay, cool. Now, what can I do to make this the best thing ever? What can I learn from this that this is going to help me grow? I ask myself this question. And then thirdly, I say this to myself constantly. Charles, you're just human. You're going to muck up.

And you're going to muck up more. You are going to fail. And you're going to fail more and more and more and more. And the more that you grow and the more that you succeed, the worse your failures are going to be because you're going to have more at stake. Like you cannot avoid this unless you just don't do it. If you want to grow and you want to try, you are going to fail. You are not smarter than Jeff Bezos.

If Jeff Bezos is going to fail at competing with the iPhone, you can also fail. And you are just human for doing so. So if failure was good enough for him, it's good enough for me.

And I have no expectation otherwise. So what can I use from this experience to make it worthwhile? How do I grow? And you've heard this phrase. We're going to finish up here. This has been a long episode. I hope it's been valuable. You've heard the phrase, what would you do if you couldn't fail?

I want to change that and I want to challenge that. What would you do if when you failed, it either wasn't a big deal or you learned that to propel you into your biggest successes and your biggest learning and your biggest growth yet? What would you do? If failure was a normal part of the process, what would you do if you could fail over and over and over again and all it did was help you to become the person that you need to be?

Not what would you do if you couldn't fail, but what could you do if failure actually was positive? That is a case. That is true. And you can use it. We're going to end it there.

All right. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that this has been valuable and useful and helpful. And if it's been a complete flop and failure, then that's fine as well because I will learn a lot from it. So very meta there. And if you liked this, if you did happen to think, wow, this actually was kind of good, then you can leave me a review.

review on Apple Podcasts. You can also leave me a review if you absolutely hated it because I would love to hear that as well. You can give me a one star. You can give me a five. I don't mind either way. I win or I learn. Either way is fine.

It just helps people to know that the podcast is good. And if it's not, then it helps me to know how to make it better. So when either way, thank you. I appreciate you. And I'll see you next week for another episode. And a final note, this is the only plug that I will do because this is a...

sponsored podcast fully funded by myself is if you are wanting help with weight loss if you want to learn how to use failure if you're at this point and you've nodded your head a few times and you're like yeah I don't know how to use failure I don't have that skill set yet. Then that is what we teach inside of my program, Lean of Plants. And the reason that I believe we are different is that we are helping people to understand how to utilize failure to see results and to see success.

Not how to be perfect, but actually how to fail well. Because if you can do that, you become unstoppable. So if you want help doing that... and you want to turn your failures into successes, you want to be stopping scared of failure and you actually want to use it to propel you forward, then hop on a call with my team. We would love to talk to you about how to make that happen so that you can actually achieve these big scary goals that you have. Lose 40 pounds.

find food freedom and become the person that is the hero of their own story. That really is it for me. I'll see you next week for another episode. Bye.