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Hey, welcome back to another YouSchool podcast episode. I'm Scott Schimmel. I'm the host and leader of this whole thing. And really what drives the use school is this idea that life ought to be designed? Well, if you're going to have a life, you might as well make it a meaningful one. And with so many different options for a path in life, you might as well take a step back, go through a process that will help you get clarity and go down that path. So then the question becomes what is the process to getting clear about what a meaningful life looks like? Now there's three pillars to get clear on your identity, your purpose, and your relationships. And what we're working through are the different dynamics of each one of those pillars. And what we have found is the absolute best, most effective way to get to clarity and confidence, about your identity, about your purpose, and about your belonging, issues of relationship is to reflect on and answer these really big questions about life. And so today, we're going to tackle one of those crucial critical questions. And the question is this, what have you learned from failure? Now, we live in a world where everybody gets a trophy, I have been coaching youth sports for the better part of a decade. And every single team that I've ever coached, every player gets a trophy at the end of the season. For many years, I'd say three or four seasons, at least of Little League Baseball, I coached a team. And our record was awful. I'm talking Oh, for 21 for 91, and 19, two and 18. Oh, and 20, those types of losing seasons. And guess what, every single one of those players has a trophy sitting somewhere in their closet, or on a bookshelf. They didn't earn a trophy, they got a trophy for participating. Now, there's been a lot of commentary about that idea over the years. And really the question then is what happens to somebody who doesn't? It's not that you don't fail, it's that you don't learn from failure or from failure, because that's really the danger. There's an idea that if you've at first you don't succeed? Try try again. Well, just a sneak preview into this episode, there's science, or good research done for decades and 10s, of 1000s of people's lives studied to show that that notion is not true. It doesn't work that way. If at first you don't succeed, do not try try again. So that's that's a bit of a teaser to stay with us. But what we're trying to hopefully do is reimagine and maybe even rebrand failure amongst parents, and educators and kids. And it's, it's a clever phrase in the startup world, fail fast fail often, people have t shirts that are made out of it. There's no shortage of Instagram, quote, posters in the entrepreneurship world about that idea.
But how do you rebrand failure? Where can you look to a culture where failure is just a part of the job? I've learned a lot from the military community having worked with them for the past seven, eight years, particularly special forces, special operators, folks like Navy SEALs, who of course, they have a very different perspective on failure. Failure isn't really called failure, except when it comes to losing lives or overall missions. Rather, they're in this culture of continuous improvement, constant learning. Getting better. Everything can be debriefed is what a friend of mine said, and we debrief everything at nauseam. In other words, we look at every single situation, of course, for what went well and how to repeat it. But even more so, how to avoid making the same mistakes the next time we want to get better and better and better. So how do we rebrand failure? How do we rethink it? Because ultimately, if we don't let kids fail, they won't learn significant truths about themselves, the world or life itself. Failure is where the good stuff happens. Okay, a life without failure, a life where you avoid taking risks. A life where you avoid feedback, a life where you stay in your lane, a life where if Something doesn't go well, you blame the circumstances or the other parties, what will happen? In that kind of life, we've got a good friend. He's a co founder of the new school, his name is Greg Emoto. And one of his classic phrases is to talk about the Doom Loop The Loop of doom. Imagine the infinity symbol, where because you don't learn from failure, you continue to repeat the same things over and over and over again, hoping for other results. It's this loop of doom. Here we are, again, here we are, again, that's what will happen if you avoid learning from and reflecting on failure. Not only that, you'll see a bunch of bullet points here, if you're watching, if you're listening, you know, you can watch this right? On YouTube. You waste potential, you'll stay stuck in fear, you'll be dishonest, you won't deal with reality, the reality that there were mistakes made that you can get better, there's room for improvement, you'll set yourself up for more disappointment and failure. Again, that doom loop. And you'll likely get to a path where you regret the decisions, regret the opportunities missed and wasted. But here's the deal. If you do confront failure, look at it, talk about it, invite other people to share their thoughts about your failure, you'll grow in these particular ways, you'll become more clear, become more honest, you live a more authentic life, you'll be more humble. And you will grow into wisdom. You'll grow into wisdom.
There's different types of failure. Of course, there's failure where you missed expectations, you fail a test, you've failed to meet the expectations that were set before you. Maybe you failed in showing up on time, you failed in turning something in on time you failed and you didn't get all the answers, right. That's a certain type of failure. But there's other kinds of failures, failures of commitment. There's moral failures or values failure. I remember getting caught cheating, I think freshman year, maybe in high school. And that was a failure. What kind of failure was it it was a moral failure is a failure of what my parents had instilled in me is a failure of judgment. That's a that's a type of failure. There's, there's losing, of course, losing a game missing the shot, getting kicked off the team not making the team. And then there's other kinds of failure, failure have to commit, you just don't stick with it, you quit. Another kind would be a failure to acknowledge a failure to admit, have you ever been around somebody that fails to admit or confess or apologize or become more honest about who they are, or what they've done or not done? How many of you have parents that didn't show up in a particular way that you wish they had in your life, and yet they fail to admit, or to acknowledge, these are all different types of failure. And it turns out failure there's, there's this whole science of it, I've done a deep dive on the the science of failure. And it's, it's fascinating. So that idea of if at first you don't succeed, try try again, research has proven that in research, study after study, that that's not true. You can repeat and most people do repeat the same mistakes fail in the same way over and over and over again, failures to commit you see that pattern in people's lives, failure to meet expectations, see that from job to job, from major in college to the next major moral failures get repeated. So what's the difference? The difference is reflection. Learning to reflect on failure learning, so to learn from it, so think about it, to watch the tape, to invite people to share their thoughts and their perspective, to go back and walk through the details. And obviously, why do we avoid that it's painful, it's uncomfortable. It's humiliating. It's embarrassing, it's vulnerable. It's shameful sometimes. So look back on our failures, but that is the key to growth that is the key to learning to getting out of the loop of doom. And so what if, what if we teach young people how to do that? What if, what if we do? How would that start? I think it would start by modeling. What if we learn to celebrate learning from failure and make it normal? So that's the idea. From this question. It's hard to build a life of wisdom and clarity and honesty and authenticity, all these ingredients of a hearty, healthy, good identity. If you don't learn a habit of reflection On the ways in which you failed. So let's make it normal. We go first as adults. And then we start asking that question, by the very inquiry by asking the question, it supposes that there would be an answer, right? It implies that there ought to be an answer to that question. So we can start asking that question. I know parents who will ask that question to their kids. What did you fail at today? What did you try and it didn't go? Well? What did you What did you take a risk? And it kind of backfired? And, and to learn to say, That's awesome. Look, you grew, you learned, you showed up with courage and vulnerability, that's awesome. So we can model it, we can celebrate it. And we can ask it. That same question. What did you learn? What did you learn from failure. We'll be back next week, where we dig into this with somebody in real life, about their failures and what they've learned.
We're taking the mystery out of building a meaningful life with a step by step roadmap. In school, you're taught everything under the sun, from algebra to art history, to aerodynamics, but you're not taught how to understand yourself. Or given the tools to make sense of all the questions life throws your way. Without it, most people will take the path of least resistance, hoping it all just works out someday. That's why the use school is here. for over 10 years, we've been specializing in designing transformative curriculum and learning environments to guide people through life's transitions to find, define and unleash great stories with their lives. You only get one life. You only get one story. Make sure it's the right one.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
