Dr. Gio Valiante (Part 2): Failure and Success [The Knowledge Project Ep. 181]

Shane Parrish: The direction I want to go after that is in failure. Often, the reason we don’t try things is [because] we don’t want to fail, so we don’t build these muscles because we’re not failing. What happens when fear takes hold of us? What does the world look like? How is it different? And how does it shape what we’re about to do? And how do we get out of that?

Gio Valiante: Great question. Yeah, because one of the things that we know is [that] people think of success and failure as opposite things—that the more I succeed, the less I fail. But that’s really sort of a modern conception of success and failure. The fact of the matter is [that] failure is woven into the fabric of success. It’s not “How do you avoid failure?” That’s the wrong question. The right question is, “How do I fail, or how should I fail in ways that lead to the type of skill development and belief system that allow me to succeed long term?” It’s “How do we fail?” In snow skiing, you want to teach kids how to fall so they don’t get injured. You want to teach students how to keep trying and pushing themselves as hard as they can. And the question is, “What do they do with the failure?”