MM#244--In Failing, We Succeed

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, i am David and welcome back to another… Mojo Minute Now. Last week I told you we're going to dive back into philosophy 101 with Saints Augustine and Aquinas, but I'm going to postpone that for just one week because we've had some heavy stuff the past two weeks and to keep everybody healthy and happy we are and, more importantly, to keep some balance between the super theoretical and between the super practical, we are going to take…. We're going to talk today, very practical, in fact. We're going to talk today practical and we're going to talk on Thursday practical. I hope you don't mind, but I think your mind will actually thank you for this brief respite of jumping into the deep end. And let's have a little fun this week, shall we? So, with that brief administrative announcement, let's dive in, but let's not dive into the deep end, and as is our new custom and many people are liking it. So thank you for sending me those messages. Let's go directly to our first pull quote. Ultimately, fear of failure generates a vicious cycle that creates what is most feared. To break this cycle, you need to make peace with failure. It isn't enough to merely tolerate it. You need to appreciate the failure and use it. Body-mind masters have made peace with failure, treating it like an old friend playing a practical joke. The greatest inventors, artists and athletes have all failed many times. Babe Ruth was the home run king of his time, but also the strikeout king, and this great quote comes to us from Dan Milman from the book Body-Mind Mastery Training for Sport and Life. Now Dan is a former world champion athlete and gymnastics coach at Stanford and UC Berkeley, and this book is a pretty cool look at the integration of Eastern and Western philosophies into a philosophy of life. So back to this fear of failure. Subject Do you fear failure? Do you appreciate failure? Now Dan mentions Babe Ruth being the home run king for his time and then also being the strikeout king. But back in the day when I was growing up, there was a powerful, powerful Nike commercial, which I think brings this all more relevance than Babe Ruth. That Nike commercial had Michael Jordan as the voiceover and he said this quote I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning, shot and missed. I failed over and over and over again in my life And that is why I succeed. Now. How's that for fearing failure. There is no fear there. There is only learning from failure and a deep appreciation that when he did fail, when Michael did fail, how would he learn from it? So, in this short and quick mojo minute, do you fear failure? Do you appreciate failure? Can you learn from your failures? After 300 mojo minute episodes, i have failed at some of these, but in almost every failure I have tried to learn something. So let's you and I both learn from our failures. It's in learning from our failures, where we remain humble and yet where we also grow, and then growing, that is where we start to build a flourishing life.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at team mojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.