Failure Is Bearable. Regret Is Not.

As you set your intentions for the year ahead, choose the path that gives you stories, not excuses, attempts over avoidance, action over perfection, experience over endless preparation. You survive failure. But you don’t outgrow regret.

Transcript

As the calendar turns and our social media feeds fill with goal lists, vision boards, and bold declarations, I want to pause on a quieter idea, one that matters far more than any resolution you’ll write.

I recently heard an interview with George Clooney that stopped me cold. He said something deceptively simple: most of us can live with failure. Especially as we get older. We understand it. We contextualize it. We even expect it.

But regret? That’s different. Regret is much harder to live with, particularly when it’s the regret of never even trying.

That distinction matters. Oh, does it matter.

Failure has a reputation problem. We treat it like a verdict, a label, a permanent mark on our character. But in reality, failure is information. It’s feedback. It’s proof of engagement. You only fail at things you actually attempt.

And Clooney’s point was blunt and honest: you cannot achieve anything meaningful without failing along the way. There is no exception clause for talent, luck, good looks, or timing.

Failure hurts, yes. It bruises the ego. It can cost money, time, bandwidth, even reputation. But it fades. It gets reframed. It becomes a story you tell with perspective. Eventually, failure becomes something you survived.

Regret behaves differently.

Regret lingers. It grows louder with time, not quieter. It shows up in reflective moments…on birthdays, at reunions, during long walks, and late at night when the noise finally dies down.

Regret isn’t about what went wrong. It’s about what never happened. The conversation you didn’t initiate. The business you didn’t start. The book you didn’t write. The leap you kept postponing because the conditions weren’t perfect.

Here’s the cruel irony: many people avoid failure so carefully that they guarantee regret.

As we age, our relationship with risk changes. We stop fearing failure as much because we’ve accumulated evidence that we can recover. What we begin to fear instead is wasted potential. Unused ability. Stories left untold. Chances we talked ourselves out of with logic that sounded responsible at the time.

That’s why this is a powerful New Year’s lens.

This year, instead of asking, What if I fail? ask a better question: What if I regret not trying?

One question is short-term and emotional. The other is long-term and existential.

You don’t need reckless goals or performative resolutions. You need one honest attempt at something that matters to you. Something slightly uncomfortable. Something with a non-zero chance of failure. That’s the price of meaningful progress.

Failure will teach you. Regret will haunt you.

As you set your intentions for the year ahead, choose the path that gives you stories, not excuses. Choose attempts over avoidance. Action over perfection. Experience over endless preparation.

You can survive failure. But you don’t outgrow regret.

And that makes the choice more clear than we often want to admit.

Good luck on the journey and have an amazing 2026.