{"id":59029,"date":"2022-01-22T14:57:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-22T18:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=59029"},"modified":"2022-01-26T11:42:19","modified_gmt":"2022-01-26T15:42:19","slug":"fail-to-succeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fail-to-succeed\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Must First Fail to Succeed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>How do you deal with failure? How can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/embracing-failure\/\">embracing failure<\/a> help you on the way to success? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of us will do anything we can to avoid failure\u2014it\u2019s embarrassing and painful. However, to achieve success, you&#8217;ll need to fail a few times. Every failure teaches you how not to do something and forces you to come up with ideas you wouldn\u2019t have normally thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is why you must fail to succeed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-learn-something-from-every-failure\"><strong>Learn Something From Every Failure&nbsp;<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>If you act aggressively and persistently, you\u2019ll inevitably fail often. However, failure is a good thing\u2014if you learn from it. Trial and error is the most effective way to learn anything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019ve all heard stories of people learning valuable lessons from failure. We know that it\u2019s a necessary part of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/how-to-be-rich-and-successful\/\">the path to success<\/a>. Yet most of us will go to great lengths to avoid failure to the point of not trying at all. Arguing against this attitude, Holiday points out that you must first fail to succeed because trial and error hurt<strong> <\/strong>much less than a life in which you\u2019ve stopped learning. Prideful people who refuse to learn from their mistakes doom themselves to repeat the same misguided actions indefinitely.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s in your best interest to fail as soon as possible, to catch obvious mistakes before investing hundreds of hours into something destined to fail. Thus, Holiday recommends you <strong>take small, frequent risks when working toward your goals. <\/strong>The sooner you can expose your work to external feedback (and potential failure), the better. With every failure, investigate what went wrong and why. Then change something and try again, repeating this cycle as often as you can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>How Thinking in Bets Helps You Learn<\/strong><br><br>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/app\/book\/thinking-in-bets\"><em>Thinking in Bets<\/em><\/a>, professional poker player Annie Duke <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/app\/book\/thinking-in-bets\/chapter-1\">dispenses advice on strategic decision-making in uncertain circumstances<\/a>. Like Holiday, Duke views trial and error as the most valuable learning tool available to us, and she offers specific tips on how to get the most value out of our mistakes.<br><br>Duke\u2019s thesis is that <strong>we should view every belief we hold and decision we make as a <em>bet<\/em><\/strong>\u2014a gamble based on the idea that something <em>might<\/em> be true. Thinking in bets is helpful for two reasons: First, it forces us to acknowledge that there is always a chance we could be wrong. Instead of seeing our beliefs as either true or false, we place them on a spectrum <em>between<\/em> true and false, making us more likely to adjust them after negative outcomes.&nbsp;<br><br>Second, thinking in bets helps us recognize that every decision we make requires risk and potential sacrifice. Just as we lose money on a failed bet, every misguided decision we make leads us to a worse future than we could have had. For both of these reasons, imagining our beliefs and decisions as bets helps us avoid repeating the same mistakes\u2014which, as Holiday points out, is far more painful than learning from trial and error.&nbsp;<br><br>Additionally, thinking in bets naturally encourages us to take small risks for frequent external feedback, as Holiday advises, since it prompts us to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/consider-the-possibilities\/\">consider the possibility<\/a> that long-term unquestioned beliefs may lead to a massive loss. For example, imagine you\u2019re managing a PR team in charge of your company\u2019s rebranding. If you have faith in your team, you may be tempted to invest hundreds of hours in a full redesign that will sweep your boss off their feet. If you were to think in bets, however, you would recognize that this is a costly gamble with a non-zero chance your boss won\u2019t like it. A smaller, safer bet would be to run several design mockups by your boss, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/seek-feedback\/\">seeking feedback<\/a> before investing too much time and money in the project.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How do you deal with failure? How can embracing failure help you on the way to success? Most of us will do anything we can to avoid failure\u2014it\u2019s embarrassing and painful. However, to achieve success, you&#8217;ll need to fail a few times. Every failure teaches you how not to do something and forces you to come up with ideas you wouldn\u2019t have normally thought of. Here is why you must fail to succeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":36299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,43],"tags":[259],"class_list":["post-59029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motivation","category-self-improvement","tag-the-obstacle-is-the-way","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why You Must First Fail to Succeed - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"To achieve success, you must fail a few times as failure is the greatest teacher you can learn from. 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Here&#039;s why you must fail to succeed.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fail-to-succeed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-01-22T18:57:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-01-26T15:42:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/failure.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"894\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"515\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Darya Sinusoid\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Darya Sinusoid\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fail-to-succeed\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fail-to-succeed\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Darya Sinusoid\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/0421cce75bc249b11e2517b3a91f9c46\"},\"headline\":\"Why You Must First Fail to Succeed\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-01-22T18:57:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-01-26T15:42:19+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fail-to-succeed\/\"},\"wordCount\":645,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fail-to-succeed\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/failure.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Obstacle Is The Way\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Motivation\",\"Self-Improvement\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fail-to-succeed\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fail-to-succeed\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fail-to-succeed\/\",\"name\":\"Why You Must First Fail to Succeed - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fail-to-succeed\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/fail-to-succeed\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/failure.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-01-22T18:57:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-01-26T15:42:19+00:00\",\"description\":\"To achieve success, you must fail a few times as failure is the greatest teacher you can learn from. 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