You’re Going to Fail, and That’s Terrific

Read Time: 5 minutes

Look, I’ll just be honest with you: If you’re going for anything cool or special in your life, your odds aren’t great.  

 

This is generally true.  Most of the time, when you think the phrase, “I wonder what the chances are that…” I can stop you right there and say, “Bad.”

 

The very nature of your pursuit being special means that this is probably not happening for you because, well, that’s what special means.  So I’ll just tell you before you even begin to try to make it as a screenwriter, or win the lottery, or make Channing Tatum want you: you’re definitely going to fail.  

 

Don’t worry.  This is a good thing.

 

You’re Not Jennifer Lawrence

 

Here’s the thing: We all like to think that we’re the protagonist in the movie where, “Yeah, the odds aren’t great for everybody else.  But I believe in myself, and I’m great, and my thing or my attempt is the one that will save the world.  I’m one sweaty montage away from greatness.”

 

Of course everybody thinks this about their pet pursuit (otherwise they wouldn’t pursue it), and almost everybody is wrong.

 

Basically none of us are the protagonist.  In reality, we’re all the guy ordering coffee in line in front of the protagonist.  We aren’t played by Jennifer Lawrence. We’re played by some struggling actor who spent 2 weeks rehearsing the line, “Just a decaf, thank you,” over and over just so he didn’t fuck up Jennifer Lawrences’s scene.

 

Point being, you’re probably not special, and if you can come to terms with that, you’ve got a huge advantage.

 

Other people aren’t ready to fail. They don’t know failure is coming to them until it arrives and swiftly wrecks their soul. They’re only ready to succeed.  This means that failure is going to be worse than anything they ever prepared for, and it will break a lot of their spirits.   The failure that hits us all will weed out the idiots who aren’t ready for it.

 

 

So that’s the first reason this is great for you.  People with broken spirits suck at doing things, and competing against them is totally ideal.

 

If you’re ready for failure, then when it comes, you have a better shot of keeping your spirit intact.  If your spirit is broken, you’re a lot less likely to engage in perhaps the most important part of this kind of success.

 

The “Do It a Whole Fucking Bunch of Times” Principle

 

When I say that you’re probably going to fail, I don’t necessarily mean over all.  I really mean with each attempt at something special. Your odds of getting a fellowship that a billion people are applying to, or a new Hyundai in a charity raffle, or Channing Tatum’s attention, are all basically none….this time.

 

If you do each of these things many times, however, your odds of succeeding at some point improve.  This is called The Bernouli Process, and according to some dude on Reddit who got upvoted a bunch of times (where all of my best research comes from), it works like this:

 

Say you have a 1% chance at your pursuit.  That means you have a 99% chance of failure.  

 

In order to find out your chance of failure after, say, ten attempts, you’d multiply that 99% chance (or 0.99) by itself ten times.  Given this, your chance of failure after ten attempts is a little under 90.5%, which means at that point, your chance of success (one time) is a little over 9.5%.  

 

If you attempt that thing a hundred times, your chances of failure drop all the way to 36.6%, which puts your chances of success at least once at 63.4%.  

 

Now as hard as trying something a hundred times sounds, know this–for your dream, it’s probably harder.  1% isn’t really that small of a chance given some of the crazy shit Americans try.

 

You have way worse odds than that when you audition for American Idol, or try to get into a good school, or try to get an attractive person to not find you repulsive.  

 

Think of it like this: your odds of winning the Powerball are .00000000034%, which means that to get even 50% odds of winning, you have to play A BILLION FUCKING TIMES. So congrats! If you can find a way to live until you’re 20 million, you’ve got it down to a coin flip!*

 

*Just don’t play the fucking lottery.

 

But the principle remains the same: If you attempt something with shit odds a bunch of times, your odds become progressively less shit.

 

This is where the “Do it a Whole Fucking Bunch of Times” principle kicks in.  If you just keep hammering away, keep pushing, keep trying to shoot the moon, you’ve at least got a shot at hitting that son of a bitch one of these days.  

 

 

But do this knowing that you have to fail a bunch of times.  Have to. You have to go into every endeavor knowing you’re going to get rejected, and Channing Tatum may even file a restraining order against you.

 

That way, when the failure comes, you’re ready to shake it off.  Every time you submit your novel, and the powers that be go, “This shit is terrible.  Please stop,” you’re mentally prepared to decidedly not stop. You’re able to immediately accept that as part of the process of success.

 

But that brings us to another conundrum:

 

How do you still work hard and make a serious attempt at something that you know you’re going to fail at?

 

You can accomplish this when you realize you really have no choice.  

 

If putting your best foot forward gives you a 99% chance of failure, putting some shitty second left foot with toe fungus forward is going to leave you with a 99.9% chance of failure (the 0.01% being like, “Oh, her name sounds cool.  Let’s hire her.”) The difference between 99 and 99.9 may not seem like a lot, but after many attempts, it’s massive.

 

After 100 attempts with a 99% chance of failure, your likelihood of success is 63.4%.

 

After 100 attempts with a 99.9% chance of failure, your likelihood of success is 9.5%

 

That could very well mean the difference between you living the rest of your life in your current boring ass condition, and you being Mrs. Magic Mike.  

 

So there it is: Doing your best at every attempt–even though you’re for sure going to fail–is the only way you’ll eventually succeed.  

 

Doing your best also helps you with a very important part of this:

 

How to Up Your Chances to “Slightly Less Shitty”

 

Here’s the other great thing about trying shit again, and again: If you attempt something 100 times, and you improve a little every single time, your 1% chance of success can quickly become 1.2%, then 1.5%–maybe even 2% eventually.

 

If you can do that again and again, you can push yourself up to a nearly 80% chance of success by the time you hit a hundred attempts.

 

At that point, your stupid ass dream might actually even almost be worth going for!

 

So every time you fail, investigate why.  Take in every bit of feedback you can.

 

Listen when people say: “Hey you come on a little strong. Maybe stop telling strangers they have beautiful shoulders and take about three fewer spritzes of that cologne,”  or when they say, “Sorry, but people in astronaut school can generally do more than three and a half push-ups,” or when they say, “Your novel sounds a lot like ET. Maybe at least lose the little girl character you’ve named, ‘Drew Barrymore.’”

 

So if you have anything you want to go for with bad odds (and that’s most of us) know that you’re going to fail–not just once, or twice, but over and over, and over.  Accept failure as the norm. Expect it around every corner. Get up out of bed every day, ready to smile, be kind, and fail all over the fucking place.

 

 

Then remain relentless.  Put your best foot forward in your pursuit again, and again, and again.  The odds against you are Goliath, and you are David, but if you just keep not dying, you can wear Goliath down.  Take your rejection letters and confused glances from girls at the bar, and all of your other failures as badges of honor.  These are nothing but you bumping up your percentage of success, little by little.

 

So keep bashing your head against this wall for as long as you need to, and maybe, there’s a slight chance something interesting may eventually happen for you.