In 2009. I had one goal. To fail, and fail and fail, in order to succeed. At the beginning of the year I decided that I was going to put myself into as many 'sink or swim' situations as possible. I wanted the ability to make a complete ass of myself and fall face first into a steaming pile of rejection as much as I could. I wanted to know what it felt like to be thrown out of town into the mud, and told to "...And Stay Out". I wanted to do all this, with the ultimate goal of learning from it.
OKAY. I know this one. You're just saying 'failure ultimately leads to success, as long as you learn from the failure'... Heard that before Conor...even if you're saying 'don't make the same mistake twice'...I've heard that one too---Actually, if I may interrupt...
By living each day to fail, one has to put themselves into a position to fail. This begs the question what exactly is failure? If I think the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to win, but they lose, did I fail at predicting the future? Am I a failure? The answer in no. Failure, by my definition, can only occur when one puts one's self into a position where their emotional and personal status are at risk. Situations in which things could go very well or very bad; like attempting to lure a vivaciously sharp featured hipster sex -tress into joining you for 'Taco Tuesday' back at your place. In this situation, if she dismisses your advancements and throws you to the curb like the last three Chew gum pieces from the 25 cent machine in the limbo shopping cart area of a Fortino's, you will feel like the gum that Chews are made of; mashed up and insignificant. You will have failed at your attempt and be greeted with a burn much worse than the burn of that random chew candy that has a hint of mint or cinnamon in it. Your emotions and confidence can suffer. If you succeed you may be in for one of the greatest sexual nights of your life and your personal stock and confidence could triple overnight. Thus, in order to truly succeed you have to put yourself into a situation where failure is not only a possibility, it is a likely possibility. A situation where, on paper, it looks like you want to fail.
So what about the lottery? If I win that my personal stock goes up----No it doesn't. You just become an 'undeserving newbie richo' who is forced to make up a fake reason as to why he can afford three jet skis and has them all parked in his Burlington duplex driveway. Ya see...
Losing at the lottery is a not a failure. Personal investment and emotion investment is huge on one side; if you win, your life is thrown into a completely different realm, yes. But, if you lose you experience no remorse, guilt, or embarrassment. You do not learn anything from losing the lottery. A true failure situation, usually causes frustration, embarrassment and other emotion pains. All situations, that we learn to avoid. If one can apply the lessons learned from great, and small failures, than one will inevitably succeed. In fact, large leaps forward in confidence, monetary gain, and power can happen, all with one success. But much like the saying 'An overnight success in ten years', one success isn't just the result of one lucky night. It is usually the result of numerous attempts and failures. Finally by succeeding, one's past failures are re-programed and remembered differently. As if you were watching the board game Jenga in reverse, your failures go from a collapsed tower of disappointing memory blocks chaotically toppled one on top of the other without any rhyme or reason, into a strong and sturdy tower of blocks that are no longer failures; but learning experiences.
I hate philosophies with no graphs. You're basically full of shit Conor.----Okay, here is a graph.
THE LEVY FLIGHT GRAPH OF SUCCESS
Above is a Levy Flight graph (the graph below). A Levy Flight graph in this scenario is best imagined if you think of the graph line as the flight path of a seagull looking for a fish. Lets assume that the beginning straight line is the seagull flying towards the lake. Once he gets to the lake, his hunt for fish begins. The seagull tends to hover and circle specific plots of water, scanning the surface for activity, ready to pounce. These circlings are represented by the bunches and clusters of sharp turns. As you can see a seagull has the tendency to fly around in circles and tight bunches, but every now and then will go for a long journey. These long journey's account for the noticeably long straight lines. Ultimately this is how a seagull survives.
That's actually kind of cool. --- No shit. Now....
THE HAPPY SEAGULL EFFECT (brand new!) TOP GRAPH
Imagine if this seagull was you. Rather than looking for a large mouth bass, you're fishing for a sexy land-shark in the form of a beautiful woman (or any other item, job or thing that represents a success you wish to acquire). Every time you take a chance to fail or succeed at obtaining your land-shark, and fail, your graph line moves in a tight bunch, like the seagull hovering in a plotted area. Every time you succeed, you take a huge jump, resulting in a straight line. Now imagine that up was the direction of success. The difference in your graph compared to the Levy Flight graph above is that yours would progress upwards, like the graph on top.
(due to poor examples from the Internet these were the best graphs I could find, but I think my point is clear.)
I think you're making some sense here..-- I might be.
But even if I'm not, I will learn from this potential bullshit I just made up, and try not to make the same mistake twice.
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