Seek Failure, but Always Fail Forward

Seek failure . . .

Why in the world would anyone do that?

You and I have failed often . . . but why exactly would we try to fail? Why would we seek failure?

And fail forward . . .

I suppose this means that we should try to learn from our failures so that they eventually benefit us. But failing seems so difficult and demoralizing, even if we are trying to fail forward.

As humans, we don’t want to fail. We want to win the game, get the best role in the play, make the sale to our client.

We want to succeed, not to fail.

And I am right there with each of you. Whatever I do, I always try to do it with an eye towards success. Even if I am trying to fail forward, it is real tough to actively try and seek failure.

Yet, I fail . . .

My website

I started this website a couple of years ago, not really knowing how to create a website. I even threw away many of the first articles that I wrote because they just weren’t very good.

I remember looking at my website statistics within the first 20 minutes after the site was launched. I noticed that I had already received 29 views. I even noticed that the number of views kept increasing. However, when the number reached 59, I noticed that the number of views would only increase when I clicked on my website.

OK . . . I guess that it will be tougher to get visitors than I thought it would be.

Fail forward? Not really. I wanted this website to succeed immediately.

When I run

I wrote earlier this year about how I had been injured and away from running for almost 4 years. I also wrote about how I finally got back into running some hard races when a friend convinced me to run a trail marathon on 5 days notice.

But I didn’t really write about how many times I failed while trying to get back into running.

I would run a mile . . . and my Achilles would hurt.
I would go for a hard tempo run . . . and end up walking halfway through.
I would try to lift some weights . . . and find it impossible to run the next day.

I failed a lot. But did I really seek failure?

With money

Although I feel like I’m pretty good with money, I certainly still struggle with it.

I’ve had over $400k in debt, failed to save as much as I should for retirement, and lost a lot of money on a rental house. I’ve even written about some of the huge mistakes that I have made with money.

Just like anyone else, I’ve definitely failed a lot with my money.

Success is optimal . . . ?

I want to succeed with my website, running, money, relationships, and family. I want to succeed in every aspect of my life.

But is “success” really optimal?

I could set a goal of getting 100 visitors to my website. And, of course, I would succeed! But would I really be successful? Would this type of success help me to change the lives of people who I’m trying to reach? Maybe it would for a couple of people. But would it really mean that my website was a success?

How should we define success

I suppose that what I’m really trying to figure out is what it means to be successful in any one part of my life. Even if I set a goal of having 100 people visit my website, I wouldn’t have a successful website. If I set a goal of running 25 miles this year, I wouldn’t really be a successful runner, but I would “succeed” with my goal.

So we can’t define success just by looking at whether or not we have accomplished some arbitrary goal that we have set.

But then how do we define success? Would my website be successful if 1,000 people visited it? What about 100,000? Or 10,000,000? I suppose that somewhere on this continuum, I would feel like I owned a successful website. But where would it be? What number would cause me to say that I succeeded in building a great website? And why did I choose that number?

Success should be difficult to achieve

One of the articles that I really enjoyed writing was entitled Do Some Hard S*** Today. Over the past several years, this has kind of become part of my philosophy about life.

We won’t be happy if we just sit around and take the easy, society-approved path through life.

Driving mindlessly from store to store or sitting and watching Netflix in our air conditioned house do not cause us to be happy. Sure, I like watching a good movie just as much as anyone, but this will not cause true, long-lasting happiness.

Instead, one proven path towards happiness is doing hard work towards something meaningful. Therefore, we should always try to fill our lives with stuff that is extremely hard to accomplish. It will be extremely hard for my wife and I to pay off our mortgage in a year and a half. It will also be really difficult for me to run a 100 mile race this fall.

But success shouldn’t be easy.

Success should involve us working day and night to achieve something that should be almost impossible. I won’t feel successful if I pay off my mortgage in 5 years. So that shouldn’t be my goal.

I will fail

Of course, this means that I will probably fail. If I set goals that are extremely hard to achieve, then this means that I’m actively seeking failure. However, maybe this also means that what I term as a failure might actually be a success. Maybe not quite hitting my goal means that I am failing forward and going farther than I would have ever thought possible.

Since I am actively seeking failure this year, my goals are harder than ever. I am aiming to run 150 miles in a backyard ultra running race and go under 22 hours in a 100 mile running race. I also have crazy ambitious goals for this website, our money, our family, and our marriage.

Will I succeed in all of my goals?

Very doubtful.

But will the act of seeking failure while actively striving to succeed cause me to go farther than I ever thought possible?

How can you seek failure?

So what can you fail at this year?

• Can you fail to max out your 401(k) retirement plan? Maybe this means that you will only invest $15,000 instead of $19,500.
• Can you fail to pay off your debt? Maybe you will only pay off $20,000 instead of $30,000.
• Can you fail to cut your spending in half? Maybe you will only only decrease your spending by 20%.

Setting a huge goal may mean that we are seeking failure, but as we work towards a goal we actually end up succeeding. The goals will even become easier as we keep working at them.

We may fail, but we end up failing forward.

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What have you done to seek failure? Has it turned into success as you continue to work at it? Let us know in the comments.

And thanks for reading!

~Nathan

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Let’s keep living a great life … with the help of money. So what’s next?

• You can travel for free by using rewards credit cards.
• You can get motivated and get out of debt.
• You can check out the next post or the previous post and continue to learn.

But no matter what you decide to do, let’s leave the ordinary behind and take action today!