Ep. #149: Motivation Monday: Failure Is Not Okay. Stop Celebrating It.

[00:00:00] Hey, this is Mike from muscle for life and welcome to another episode of my podcast. This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed motivation Monday. Yes, I know. So creative of me. What can I say? I’m just a genius. Seriously though, the idea here is simple. Every Monday morning, I am going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead.

Because it’s one thing to know what you want to But it’s something else all together to actually make yourself do it. And I hope that this series gives you a jolt of energy and encouragement to go ahead and do all those things that you want to do. If you like what you hear, [00:01:00] then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment.

Let’s start this week’s episode with a quote. He who wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. Edmund Burke. If failure were so glorious, then they would teach it in universities. I don’t think it’s okay to fail. I think that failing sucks. I think it leads to poverty, depression, stress.

It makes you doubt your ideas, your goals, your abilities. It makes you hateful, bitter, jealous, afraid. In my opinion, failure is to be avoided at all costs. Costs. It isn’t cool, there’s nothing to celebrate, it’s really not going to teach you all that much. Now, sure, an intense fear of failure can be paralyzing.

You miss 100 percent of the shots that you don’t take, right? To that I would also say [00:02:00] that you miss 99 percent of the sloppy shots you take as well. I think that some people aren’t afraid of failing when they should be. If they were more afraid of failing, it would make them think a bit harder about their half baked ideas or maybe intensify their half assed efforts.

The truth is, it’s far easier to just embrace failure than it is to do the hard thinking and hard work that it really takes to succeed. I think that a Fear, or at least a healthy respect of failure is good. It’s your first opportunity to show that you really have what it takes to win. In fact, I would go as far as saying if you are not afraid of failure, it probably means one of two things.

You’re either really fucking good. or really fucking likely to fail. From what I’ve seen and experienced, winners don’t pretend that they don’t fear failure. They [00:03:00] use it as a motivator for action. If winners are afraid of failure because they lack knowledge or skill, then they work obsessively to get smarter or better.

If they’re afraid that their ideas have no clothes, then they research and test obsessively to validate or invalidate. If they’re afraid that they lack the will to see some goal through, then they face the hard question of why they’re doing it in the first place. Winners aren’t afraid of stepping into the arena.

They’re afraid of stepping into the arena with no idea how to fight or what they’re even up against or what they’re trying to achieve. Losers, on the other hand, are afraid of failure because deep down inside they know that winning is probably going to take a lot more than they’re willing to give. Now all of this isn’t to say that we’re never going to fail at anything, that we’re never going to experience difficulties, hardships, or setbacks.

There’s [00:04:00] always the chance that no matter how brilliant our ideas and plans are and how The business might not catch the wave, or the relationship might stumble and fall, the diet might go off the rails, and so forth. There’s also a chance that tomorrow the sun is just going to blow us back to the dark ages, or that the Norse gods are going to come and wipe us off the earth.

My point is, I guess we’re just going to have to live with these uncertainties and focus on what we can control instead, our attitudes and our actions.

Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. If you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. [00:05:00] And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness. Twitter at muscle for life. And Facebook at muscle for life fitness. So yes, we’re going to make mistakes, but making mistakes isn’t failing.

Mistakes can teach us things. Mistakes can be corrected. I, myself, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Plenty of mistakes in the last five years. I’ve wasted a lot of time creating a lot of unproductive content that really didn’t resonate with my crowd time that could have been used on projects of much higher value.

I’ve royally screwed up inventory management in my supplement company legion, and I’ve lost. Literally millions of dollars in unrealized sales because of it. That’s no fun for a startup. I will have, I’ve naively paid tens of thousands of dollars many times over to [00:06:00] where it’s now hundreds of thousands of dollars for subpar work that had to be completely redone for Tens of thousands and probably amounting into the hundreds of thousands now, more dollars.

And I don’t care how much money a company makes, that’s just annoying. None of these mistakes though, I think, have brought me even close to failure. They’ve taught me valuable lessons. They’ve been expensive lessons, but they’re valuable nonetheless. Abandoning experiments that you do isn’t failing either.

I think that experiments are exploratory in nature. They precede commitment, which precedes a true definition of success and failure. Failure is when you fully commit to something, knowing that it’s the right commitment to make, and that it can be done and it can be done. And then you just don’t get it done.

For example, when I published my first book in 2012, which is Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, it was just an experiment. I had no grand vision. I had no master plan [00:07:00] beyond, I’m just going to put this out there and see if anyone even cares. I really couldn’t fail at that point because I wasn’t sure that the project even warranted a goal.

I didn’t even give it that much thought. Now, six months, went by and then it became very clear that people did care and they did like it and that I had to make some serious decisions about where I wanted to go from there. In short, I had to determine for myself how many chips I was willing to put in the middle of the table.

I had no interest in failing fast and forward, as it’s said. If I was going to get serious about this, I wanted to win and I wanted to win big. And if I look back, there were plenty of reasons for me to be afraid of failure because, fitness gurus are a dime a dozen and the vast majority of them struggle to make even a decent living.

I had no connections in the industry, no advantage there. I wasn’t an SEO or internet marketing expert, and I knew very little about blogging in the beginning. [00:08:00] I didn’t have access to Enough capital to really give me a big upper hand. Those were just the realities that I had to face. The odds were heavily stacked against me and I knew it.

I wasn’t afraid though. Why? What gave me the audacity to think that I could make it? It wasn’t egomania and I don’t think it was dumb luck either. Sure. I’ve definitely gotten lucky along the way, as is the case with anyone who has achieved success in anything. But the main reason I wasn’t afraid of failing is I knew that I had skills and abilities that I could turn into competitive advantages.

For example, I knew that even then I was a better writer than most of the other people in this space and that the more that I wrote, the greater this advantage would become and has become. That’s exactly how it has played out. I knew that I was a better marketer. Business person and sales person as well.

And that those skills are very hard to cultivate. I didn’t have very much experience with internet marketing per se, but I had a lot [00:09:00] of experience with other types of marketing, direct response marketing in copywriting in particular. And again, that’s very hard to get good at. I also knew that I could inspire good people to work for me, and that I could build an effective team.

Whereas many other people in this space are one man, one woman shows. I also knew that I could outwork just about anyone, and I knew that many of the people in the fitness space are, by my standards, just plain losers. Lazy and fickle to quote one of my favorite biographers, Ron Chernow, never underestimate the laziness of your predecessors.

I also knew that I am a good student and learner and that I like to study and that I could use that to then create simple, practical and insightful content that would stand out from everything else in the space. So all those reasons are why I wasn’t afraid of failure in the beginning, because I knew that I had a real chance at success.

[00:10:00] Nothing’s guaranteed, of course, but I knew I had that opportunity and that’s enough for me. That’s all I need to get fired up in something. I just need a shot at the prize. I need to see some way that I can get to where I want to go. I’ve said many times that suckers and whiners. Want guarantees winners just want their turn at bat and now fast forwarding few years It turns out that I was very right in my assumptions.

I’ve sold over a million books now Muscle for life is one of the biggest if not the biggest fitness blog on the internet probably is the biggest individuals Fitness blog on the internet. My supplement company Legion has gone from zero to eight figures in revenue in just four years. And I have a loyal, capable, hardworking, super kick ass.

I will say team of people that has helped me along the way and played an integral role in everything. And we’re all just getting started. There’s a lot more to come. So anyways, the bottom line to all of this is if [00:11:00] someone is lazy, irresolute, ignorant, unskilled. This person should absolutely be afraid of failure.

The reality is they are living in an astrological strike zone. And deep down, I think many of these people know it, and that’s why they’re so afraid. Now, if someone is industrious, persistent, informed, proficient, I think this person should Can be very comfortable in taking calculated risks because they’re playing with loaded dice.

So the next time someone tells you that it’s okay to fail, you should tell them to shut the hell up. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick comment review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

This not only convinces people that [00:12:00] they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new goodies.

Lastly, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at Mike at musclefullife. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.

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