[October 21, 2026] Failure is not the enemy. That statement runs against the grain of how most people actually live. They treat a defeat as a catastrophe to be avoided, or as proof that their entire enterprise was mistaken from the start.
The practical consequence is that they keep their aims deliberately vague. If the target is never specified, the conditions under which one can be said to have failed remain equally unspecified. The short-term relief is obvious. The longer-term result is that nothing is ever properly aimed at, and therefore almost nothing of value is ever reached.
Success is a narrow target. The probability of stumbling onto it by accident is effectively zero.
People often refuse to define what they want precisely because definition forces them to confront the possibility of missing. That refusal is a form of willful blindness. It feels safer to remain foggy about the criteria.
In practice it guarantees repeated failure that is simply never recognized until the accumulated cost becomes undeniable, often years later. Looking backward, the sharper regret is usually reserved for the things never attempted rather than for the mistakes made while trying.
Avoidance also invites bitterness. When an effort does not succeed, the response “the system is against me” or “there is no point” converts a particular setback into a general refusal to try again. That bitterness is itself a failure of a higher order. It damages the capacity to correct course.
The more useful stance is simpler and harder. After a setback, the productive question is “How did I go wrong here?” Even when the majority of the outcome was situational, the fraction that belonged to one’s own preparation, judgment, or timing remains actionable.
Adjusting that fraction can change the result the next time the same situation appears. The question also supplies something concrete to do, which is a practical defense against the slide into hopelessness.
Failure, in this light, is information. It is also the unavoidable price of having standards. Without the possibility of missing, there is no genuine standard, and mediocrity carries its own harsh and lasting costs. Standards make failure possible; they also make improvement possible.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly at the outset.
When a person begins something new, he or she is, by definition, incompetent at it. That is not a moral defect. It is the ordinary condition of the beginner. The willingness to produce a bad first draft, to miss the early shots, to look foolish, is the necessary precondition for later competence.
Waiting until the work can be done well means the work is never begun, and therefore never improved. A flawed first attempt has value precisely because it exists and can be revised. Strength of character, under these conditions, consists in tolerating the fact that on this particular attempt one was not on top, and still taking the next one.
Consider the older story of Cain and Abel where the narrative remains ambiguous about the precise reason one offering is accepted and the other is not. What is unambiguous is that Cain’s turn toward resentment, rather than inquiry, makes the situation worse. The useful question remains how the offering fell short, not why rejection occurred.
When an attempt fails, the ordinary corrective process is not abandonment of the larger direction. It is reconfiguration of the goal, reconsideration of the sacrifices required, and another attempt. Each cycle tends to clarify the aim and to make the effort more effective.
Life is difficult in any case. Some measure of failure is certain whether one aims or not. If the effort is withheld, failure follows because the default conditions are hard. If the effort is made and the necessary sacrifices are accepted, failure remains possible, yet something has been learned and a direction has been maintained.
The sustaining satisfaction most people experience comes from watching themselves move, however imperfectly, toward a valued goal. That movement requires the prior willingness to miss. The alternative is not safety. It is the slower and less visible failure of never having aimed at all.
Failure is not the enemy. The refusal to specify what one wants, the refusal to produce the imperfect first version, and the refusal to learn from the miss are the real adversaries. Set the criteria. Aim, even badly. Ask how you went wrong. Reconfigure and aim again.
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NOTE: Ideas drawn in part from lectures by Prof. Jordan Peterson.
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Another piece of advice that is spot on.