71. We should all fail more

So many of us are settling for lives we never failed at.

Those are lives that were never really lived in, either. 

This episode is your permission slip to start failing more, today, at the things that actually matter to you.

It might just be the most beautiful way to live.

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I’m Simone Grace Seol. Let me help you build community care, social responsibility, and spirituality into every part of your business.

📩 My emails — my most intimate writing, sent in real time: simonegraceseol.com/get-emails

📷 Instagram — @simone.grace.seol

Transcript

Hey friends. I literally just woke up, and I woke up with this instruction in my brain: record a podcast on the importance of failing, and why we should all be actively, aggressively trying to fail more. And because I woke up like that, I even forgot to do the introduction.

Hello, you're listening to Liberatory Business. I'm your host, Simone Seol. Thank you so much for listening. There it is.

I didn't even have time to prepare notes — I literally just woke up with this instruction in my brain, so I'm gonna do it. Why? Before this starts to feel like a bigger project and I don't do it. So here it goes, raw.

The dream

I don't know why. I think it was a dream I had, and I can't even remember exactly what the dream was about. But the gist was this: let's say you have an ambition to make — I don't know — a model airplane that can actually fly. I just made that up somehow. Let's say you're obsessed with the idea of building a model airplane in your garage that can actually fly, and you didn't know anything about airplanes to start with. You didn't know anything about aerodynamics, or whatever goes into that. You didn't know anything about it. And let's say you attempted to make a model airplane that can fly in your garage 272 times, and each time you failed.

Now, have I ever tried to do something like that? No. But this fictional person, who has failed at making a model airplane that can fly 272 times, knows far more about airplanes and engineering — about components, where they come from, how they fit together, physics, blah blah blah — knows far more about that than I ever will, because I have never tried and failed at doing something like that 272 times.

I think the real gain in life is what we learn. And if you have a goal that you're really passionate about, and it matters to you enough that it's worth failing at again and again — at the end, you walk away with so much learning, regardless of whether you actually achieved what you set out to.

The marathon

Another example — let's say you have a goal to run a marathon in, I don't even know what average stats are, but let's say two and a half hours. I'm just pulling this number outta my ass. Let's say that's your goal, and you've run marathons eight times, and every single time you fail to hit your goal. But every time you did run, you tried. You really tried — you strategized, tried different diets, tried different training regimens, tried different terrains. And every single time you failed.

Guess what? After all of those eight failures, you now know so much more about your body, about the art of running, the sports mechanics of running, probably the running community, than someone like me ever will — who's never tried to come within a certain time goal in a marathon, or even run a marathon at all. I've never run a marathon. That person knows so much more about all of that, due to everything that went into their failures.

The most beautiful moment

And I think at the end of that person's life, they're gonna be able to look back at so much aliveness — wow, I cared about something so much that I put this much into it, and I learned so much from that process. That process changed me. I think when you have a goal that you're pursuing, the most meaningful, beautiful thing about a human being is when they are trying to do something.

I've always had that thought, by the way. It's way less impressive to me — someone at their glorious moment of winning the thing, succeeding at the thing, accepting the Academy Award. That's all great, but that is not the most beautiful moment of that person's life.

To me, the most beautiful part of that person's life is that time when they were so afraid that none of it was gonna work out, and everybody in the world was doubting them, and they felt all alone. They felt so unqualified, so unequipped. And in that quiet moment, two in the morning, they were like, I'm gonna try again. That is the most beautiful snapshot of a human life to me.

Someone who says: there's no glory, no audience clapping for me. There's no money and riches and respect being rained down on me. No one cares, and I'm gonna try to do this thing because it matters to me — because I believe in this, because I believe in myself. So here I go, I'm gonna dust myself off and get up again and try. That's so beautiful. Those people, in those moments, are my heroes.

And even when I look back at my own past, those moments — the least glamorous moments, when no one was even there, when it was just me and my brain and my spirit, and I was like, Simone, I think we wanna try that again — those are the moments on my deathbed I'm gonna look back on. And I'm gonna think, girl, you lived a great life. You lived a rich, meaningful life that was full of human aliveness.

Why fail at all

And I think those moments are forged by failure, because the ultimate point of all of this is not the achieve-or-not-achieve, win-or-fail binary. That's so flat, so boring, so uninteresting. It's all those moments of showing up — the beauty of the aliveness, and all the learning you take away from failing at the things that matter to you.

This came to me when I was waking up — this idea that I needed to tell you all to fail more. And it occurred to me, at the same time, that the things worth doing, the things truly worth spending time on as a human being on this planet, are worth failing at. And if it's not worth failing at, it's probably not worth doing.

What's worth failing at for you

I wanna ask you: what is that for you? What is so meaningful to you that it's worth failing at a hundred times, a thousand times? You could die trying to make this work, trying to achieve an outcome, and even if you failed, it would still be meaningful. What is so important to you that you can have that attitude about it? If you can think of something, and you're really lucky, that means you've really tapped into your aliveness. And if you're like, I'm not sure — be receptive to finding out what that is for you.

I'll say it again:* whatever's worth doing is worth failing at. And failure is worth it for what it demands of you — that you bring your human aliveness, that you bring your spirit — and for what it teaches you. Because someone who failed at something a hundred times will walk away with so much more life than someone who played it safe, never tried, never won, but also never failed.

An open question for me too

So I don't know — it's actually an interesting question for myself too. Because when I ask myself, at this point in my life, when I've already achieved a lot of things I dreamed of achieving: what's something that's so meaningful to me that it's worth failing at a thousand times? I gotta tell you, I don't immediately have an answer. It's probably somewhere in my consciousness and I can't grab it right now — also probably because I just woke up. But it'll probably come to me later. I'm gonna think about that too.

Because let's all fail more. If you meet me, or find me online, or whatever — tell me what you're excited about failing at more. I wanna know what's animating you. What do you care about? What do you enjoy learning about? What's so important to you that it's worth that much beautiful failure?

Okay, so I hope that spoke to you. I'll talk to you next time, with a podcast that probably has more planning. Bye. Hope you have a great day, wherever you are.