The author I am most interested in learning from and mimic the style of is - Scott Adams. Over the last few weeks, I am diving deep into his style of writing and learning a ton. Earlier today, I was studying his style of writing sentences when I found a fascinating passage from his book - How to fail at everything and win big.
Those few lines capture why I fell in love with that book. When I first read that couple of years ago - it was the first time that I saw a new way of looking at failure. This came to me at a time when I was wondering why I hadn't made it at so many things I tried. I was the queen of hard work but I felt like had nothing to show for it. (Now I understand that this is a type of bias - Outcome bias)
I have come a long way from that type of thinking over time and from reading books like Scott's. But I have not mastered this attitude of welcoming failure as an opportunity to extract value. I want to deliberately practice getting better at that.
I am still thinking about how to go about doing it. Maybe sharing my failures through my writing or working with an accountability buddy to learn how to invite failure, survive failure, appreciate failure and then extract the value from it.
"Over the years I have cultivated a unique relationship with failure. I invite it. I survive it. I appreciate it. And then I mug the shit out of it.
Failure always brings something valuable with it. I don’t let it leave until I extract that value. I have a long history of profiting from failure. My cartooning career, for example, is a direct result of failing to succeed in the corporate environment" — Scott Adams
Those few lines capture why I fell in love with that book. When I first read that couple of years ago - it was the first time that I saw a new way of looking at failure. This came to me at a time when I was wondering why I hadn't made it at so many things I tried. I was the queen of hard work but I felt like had nothing to show for it. (Now I understand that this is a type of bias - Outcome bias)
I have come a long way from that type of thinking over time and from reading books like Scott's. But I have not mastered this attitude of welcoming failure as an opportunity to extract value. I want to deliberately practice getting better at that.
I am still thinking about how to go about doing it. Maybe sharing my failures through my writing or working with an accountability buddy to learn how to invite failure, survive failure, appreciate failure and then extract the value from it.
It's a hard combination to pull off, because usually humility is associated with low confidence and high confidene usually associated with narcissism.
Reason for humility is required is because without humility I don't think we can actually see failure fast enough. Failure -- besides ultimate biological failure like dying or letting people near us die -- is mostly a subjective thing. Getting a paydowngrade from 105 K a year to 94 K a year in the states might be seen as a failure. Someone in
Without humility we blind ourselves to what our true failures are. We make up stories for why X was a success when maybe if we were more honest with ourselves we'd admit it was a failure. Like wise we might think that Y is a failure when actually if we were more honest it is the beginning of a success if we allow it.
And without confidence I don't think we have the fuel to keep trying. To keep being open to failure.
humility is associated with low confidence and high confidence usually associated with narcissism.
However, I also think that humility can result from high achievement and confidence as well... though it is rare and difficult. Narcissism is a beast on its own and it is on my list of things I want to understand more. I would say that narcissisms and over confidence are correlated and narcissism and humility are inversely related.
I want to believe that with work - humility, confidence and the ability to recognize failure and learn from it is achievable.