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- Lately, I've been thinking a lot
about the nature of failure, and the relationship
that most of us have with failure is
actually really bad, it's really poor,
from a mindset standpoint, and
I'm trying to understand better
why we take failure so personally.
Think about it like this, when
you're just an infant, and you're learning
to walk, you fail hundreds upon hundreds
of times, sometimes thousands of times,
and you don't just say, screw it, I quit, this is too hard.
You learn to walk, and that's true
for the majority of people.
So how is it that we let failure,
or a harsh experience in life, defeat
us so completely, when it's obvious
that failure isn't final?
It's so obvious that an infant understands
this principle, and pushes forward.
Why can't we do that?
Hey, everybody, this is Roberto Blake, helping
you create something awesome today.
Welcome back to the channel.
If you're somebody who's new, here,
and just happened to click this video, first
of all, thank you very much, and welcome.
My name's Roberto Blake.
I am a creative entrepreneur
with a successful online coaching business.
I also am a public speaker at events
like VidCon and Social Media Marketing World,
and I don't think I would've gotten there
if I hadn't learned to cope with,
and accept, failure, and that it is not final,
and that it is not the end of anything.
And I think that this is a mindset lesson
that is valuable to anybody, and
I hope that you're gonna get something from this video.
Typically, I like to think that
there are three principles, or pillars,
that I associate myself with, building a mindset for success
and creativity so that you can build the life
that you want, and so that you can attack
your problems head-on, and be your own champion,
being able to market yourself effectively using the tools
and resources of your time, and being able
to understand that marketing is about communication,
and it's about creating value for other people,
and displaying how you can do that for them,
and then finally, making money, monetizing
your skills, your knowledge, or your access,
and being able to use that to build a life for yourself,
and use money as a tool, and manage it effectively
in your life and in your business.
These are the three things that
I personally feel are the foundation
of not only my success, but any
of the happiness that I currently have in life.
Now, let's get something out of the way.
Failure is not something that a lot
of people find pleasant, or look forward to,
and that's not necessarily the relationship
that I have with failure.
I use failure like anything else.
I use it as a tool.
I use failure as a, I would say, a growth,
or training, opportunity.
And here's part of an analogy,
why you might relate to this a little bit more.
If you've ever played video games,
and lost, or died, at the video game,
then what you take away from that
as a gamer is pattern recognition.
You understand where the pitfalls
in a level are, how a certain boss
or enemy mechanic works, and you learn,
ultimately, how to play the game better, as a result.
In fact, the best gamers are the ones
who failed the most, initially, in the game,
and failed very quickly and rapidly,
and I think that's true of successful people
in business, because you now know
what to avoid a lot earlier,
when the penalties are a lot less,
and when there are less eyes on you,
and there are less scrutiny around you.
It's easier to fail early than to fail later in life.
So for me, failure represents something
that is part of the process, part of the price, of power.
It's something that can allow you
to set flags for your win condition
so you know what obstacles and pitfalls to avoid,
and so that you can, ultimately, create
your ideal win condition.
You can't create that win condition
if you don't know what your vulnerabilities
and weaknesses are, and what situations could arise,
that would present conflict, or a difficulty
that you can't overcome, just yet.
And like I said, you wanna do this
when you're playing for much lower stakes.
So I want us to change the relationship,
and the narrative, we have around
our failures, but I also think many
of you are defining failure in a
very binary way, that it's either a win or a loss,
and there are only certain situations where that is true.
Most of you should be looking at
what you're doing, and try to be more diagnostic
than evaluative, and what I mean
by that is, you should be looking
at the effectiveness of what you do,
instead of considering it a win or a loss.
That way you know how to make progress and move forward.
I think that this is essential to growth and success.
A growth mentality means that you can learn from
this experience, and you can be more efficient,
more productive, more skillful, more knowledgeable,
about the reality of it, versus
if you have a different mentality,
one that leads to a lack of success, a scarcity mentality,
every failure is a setback because you wasted time.
And yeah, time is important, and time is a finite resource.
I understand that tomorrow's not promised
to any of us, but I also think
that a lot of you have a scarcity mentality
because you're applying failure
to considering something a waste
of time, versus the patience and understanding
that it's part of the bargain of the outcome that you want.
It's part of the deal that you made,
just by showing up and being here.
So if you're afraid to waste your time,
it's almost a guarantee that you won't spend
it on something that has a high enough payout,
because your too risk adverse in that regard.
You might be too risk adverse playing
it too safe, being way too conservative,
in a time in your life when the risk
to reward ratio is ideal, when you can get
so much more by taking risk, and
where the failure, or the penalty, is
mostly emotional in nature, and it's
not really so detrimental to you.
So I would just kind of take a step back.
Now, if you're older, things might be different.
If you're watching this and you're a little bit older
of a person, you've established
your family, then taking risks may
not be something that you really need to do as regularly.
I would recommend risk to people
under 30 a lot more than I would
to people who are over 30, and have built a family,
and have people that are counting on them
in a very, very specific way, but
what I would tell you is to not avoid risk altogether,
just because of the prospect of failure.
I would measure what's really the worst that could happen,
and what's the likelihood of that worst-case scenario?
And if it's something that's manageable,
and it's just inconvenient, I would say
that it's worth it if the reward is substantial.
And so I want you guys to really analyze
these things, do a lot more deeper,
and critical, thinking, and I want
you to change your relationship
with your fear of failure, because
I think that you can beat this.
I think that you can overcome your fear
of failure if you attack it with logic,
and reason, and strategy, and with
really weighing the outcomes and the likelihood
of a worst-case scenario, versus the likelihood
of your ideal win condition, and I think
that you could put yourself in a better position
to feel satisfied with what you're doing in life,
if you just change the nature of
your relationship with failure,
and realize that failure isn't final.
Just because you failed doesn't mean that the opportunity
for victory somehow magically doesn't exist.
That's not usually the case.
For every success story, there is a long string
of failures and disappointments,
and as I like to say, I feel that's part
of the price of your power, if you want
to be successful, is that you have
to learn to live with, and accept, failure,
but more importantly, to learn
from it, and to use it as a guide,
and a tool, that can better you in the future.
So those are my thoughts around fear
of failure, and how we can move forward from it.
And I have an important question
for you guys, this is gonna be our question
of the day, and I want you to answer
it in the comments, down below.
Question of the day: What is a failure
in your life that taught you an invaluable lesson?
What is a failure that you've personally experienced,
that you think would've been a lesson
that was worthwhile, and that you wouldn't be
where you are today, if it wasn't
for experiencing the pain of that failure,
and having that minor setback,
in order to have a greater victory later?
I would love to hear those stories.
There are people who've been @ing me,
been Twittering, social media, saying
that I don't talk enough about failure, or past failures.
There are very specific lessons
and topics that I want to address
on that in the future, but more
importantly, I wanna give you guys the opportunity
to share, and give your lessons,
and your experiences with failure,
because maybe I can learn, and grow for them,
or maybe there's someone in our community
that can learn and grow from those,
so I'd like to give you guys that opportunity.
And it might be topics that I wanna touch
on in the future, so go ahead and leave
those in the comments section, would love to hear from you.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this video.
It was something a little bit different.
Go ahead and hit subscribe and notifications
if this video was helpful to you,
and don't forget that I have other videos
around mindset, money, and marketing.
There are over 1,000 videos on this channel.
Unlike what some people tell you,
this is not a YouTube tips and tricks channel.
For that, you'll wanna check out my friend Nick Nimmin,
or my friend Sean Cannell, over
at Think Media TV, awesome dudes,
and two of the best educators in the YouTube game.
If that's all you come to this channel for,
maybe you should check them out, as well.
But if you're into building your online business,
and you love that type of content,
then I also recommend my friend Sunny Lenarduzzi,
and I'm gonna link to these channels
in the description, down below.
These are friends of mine, and I
just wanted to give them credit where credit is due.
Like this video, if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome stuff
on the channel, plenty here to help you,
and as always, you guys, thanks so
very much for watching, and don't forget, go out
there, and create something awesome today.
Take care.
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