345. How to fall in love with failure

We think of failure as a terrible thing or something to be avoided. But when you learn to fall in love with failure, a whole new level of growth occurs that will have you seeing progress faster than ever. In our 20s, the so called failure-decade, we talk about how you can learn to fail, including: The reasons we fear failure Why our definition of success is inaccurate and socially conditioned The relationship successful people have with success Why grit matters more than IQ Why your fear of failure is keeping you behind 5 ways to ritualise failure in your daily life + more Listen now to change your entire mindset towards setbacks! ORDER MY BOOK https://www.psychologyofyour20s.com/copy-of-book Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg https://www.instagram.com/jemmasbeg/?hl=en# Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast https://www.instagram.com/thatpsychologypodcast/?hl=en# For business: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33Jemma Sbeg?

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• 1:11Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been really trying to prioritize my health in a realistic way this year and something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop, because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns so I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a 30-day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop.

• 1:55Jemma Sbeg?

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• 2:32Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello everybody and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology.

• 2:51Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello everybody. Before we get into the episode, I wanted to let you guys know that we now have a YouTube channel. You guys have been asking for video episodes and video versions of the podcast for so long, we finally were able to make it happen. We've been doing it for a couple of months now. So if you like watching your podcast, if you want to see behind the scenes, if you want to see some more live and in your face recordings, that is where you should go. It's just the Psychology of Your Twenties on YouTube. I'd really appreciate you quickly jumping over there and subscribing because it's a new platform for me. It's a new thing that I am trying out, but I hope you enjoy it. I hope you love it. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.

• 3:33Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course, break down the psychology of our twenties. Today, we are talking about failure, but not the bad parts about failure, not even why failure necessarily sucks or feels terrible, but rather, we're doing a full 180 mindset shift on this. We're going to talk about the gift of failure and how falling in love with failure, maybe even deliberately running towards it,

• 4:14Jemma Sbeg?

  will unlock your dream life and so much of what you desire for yourself faster than probably any other method out there. Now, this episode, it was, this is going to sound so strange, but it was weirdly inspired by Victoria Beckham, i.e. Posh Spice. Stay with me here. I know this feels very off-brand for me, but I watched her documentary on Netflix the other day where she describes basically the highs and lows of her career. I posted it on my story and so many of you responded and it weirdly brought up so many reflections for me. On failure. Now, obviously, she is a celebrity. She had a lot of control over the narrative that was portrayed in that documentary.

• 4:59Jemma Sbeg?

  But I think my own relationship to failure has changed so much recently that everything she was talking about kind of resonated on a new level. And for the first time in my life, I feel more positive about it than negative. My whole life isn't focused on avoiding failure anymore. And it definitely was when I was younger. I was so obsessed with making sure every single step, every single decision was the perfect decision, never falling short of my expectations. But strangely, you know, this is the year that I have failed more than I ever have before. And maybe I'll talk about it a little bit further down the line when some of the dust has kind of settled.

• 5:42Jemma Sbeg?

  But I have failed more this year than any other year in my life. And I have never felt more confident and certain in what I'm doing, almost because of that. So let's talk about it today. What is the freedom that you can find in failure, especially in your twenties, in the so-called failure decade? Why is it that failure is one of the singular things that all successful people have in common? No matter what industry they're in, across time? What is it about those people that approach failure differently to the rest of us? And from that, how can we cultivate a mindset that sees this as us actually getting closer to what we want, rather than further away?

• 6:26Jemma Sbeg?

  That's gonna sound strange, given how we've been taught to think about this experience. But I promise it will make more sense as the episode goes on. I am so into talking about this topic at the moment in my own life and with my friends. So I hope you can kind of feel that energy like coming off me right now. I'm so excited to get into it. Without further ado, let's talk about why we need to fall in love and how we can fall in love with failure. Stay with us.

• 6:57Jemma Sbeg?

  So let's start with a very simple question. Why do we fear failure? I say simple, but there are many, many layers to this conundrum. Starting with the most basic explanation, which is that we fear failure because it feels bad. Simple as that. It injures our ego. It's embarrassing. That creates, you know, emotional, psychological and social pain within us. Really what it's based in is self-worth and how much we implicitly tie self-worth to external achievement and the progress, the visible progress we make towards our goals. When we view ourselves as creatures of output and I guess also creatures of performance

• 7:42Jemma Sbeg?

  whose value is derived from what we do rather than who we are inherently. Anytime we come up short of what we expect of ourselves or what others expect from us, it strikes really deep, deep into our sense of character. And it also attaches to things like our discipline, our intelligence, our innate talent, our ability to work out, our creativity, strength. All of those things are deeply personal self-assessments and deeply personal attributes. So when we feel like because we have failed, it's because we lack those things or is there is some deficiency in those things?

• 8:22Jemma Sbeg?

  That is deeply painful and it's mainly first and foremost to do with our ego. Now, of course, this didn't come from nowhere. If you have ever been around children recently, specifically young kids, you, you will notice they don't really concern themselves with whether what they're doing is good or comparatively better than anyone else or up to their own standards. All they want to do is explore and learn and appreciate and laugh. And then at some stage, this pressure gets added on to them, on to us. Now, of course, you know, kids make mistakes, but all their mistakes are like, hey, when I jump off the playground, I will break my arm.

• 9:07Jemma Sbeg?

  I'm not going to jump off the playground. Or when I hit someone, I will be scolded. These are all lessons and, you know, mistakes that hopefully shape them into good and safe people. When there is an academic setting, when they enter a schooling setting, that's when like this idea of failure that we know now actually begins to take hold. The idea of like, there is a way I should perform. There is something I should be able to do or obtain. People have expectations for me to be able to do this. And so when I don't, that means I am not good enough. That means I have failed. It should come as no surprise that this situation, this setting,

• 9:49Jemma Sbeg?

  combined with a critical childhood environment, specifically parents who have high standards for us and make that known. This really exacerbates the situation and this feeling of fear of failure. You know, our parents may just want better for us. We can give them the benefit of the doubt in these situations and say, you know, they just, they thought that what they were doing was correct. But in the end, studies on critical parenting have found the long-term effects of this are actually probably the reverse of what our parents expected. It's perfectionism, it's a crippling desire to succeed,

• 10:28Jemma Sbeg?

  but that actually creates greater procrastination, greater inflexibility, incapably high standards that make failure feel like such an emotional burden that the only way to avoid it is to not even try. Over time as well, I feel like their voice, the voice of the critical parent, begins to mold with our own inner critic's voice as well. And so it's almost impossible to indistinguish them. Like when we feel like we have failed, all we hear is their voice in our head saying, try harder. That's not good enough. That doesn't meet my standards. I'm disappointed in you.

• 11:09Jemma Sbeg?

  These experiences, and there's so many others that are like this, but these experiences create learned associations where failure feels unsafe. Psychologically, our brains code it as a threat, activating that same kind of panicked response we would have for anything that's terrifying or fearful or threatening. So really what it is, is that our sense of failure comes from social expectation and these rules around what success is and isn't. And those rules are the ones that we have inherited from generations and generations before us.

• 11:49Jemma Sbeg?

  And these rules are based on this hierarchy for what is successful and what is not. Often, success means having more, being the best, obtaining more, being number one, this elevated status. What's interesting is that, again, that is completely socially conditioned and subjective. You know, animals don't agonize over their failures. Our perception of whether we've failed or been successful as well, like, really changes based on what we've been told about the task, or told about the thing that we're doing, or about certain performance metrics. Take, for example, this is the example, actually, I used with a friend the other day, the 200 meter sprint at the Olympics.

• 12:34Jemma Sbeg?

  Now, if you wanna win gold, if you wanna be a so-called success at that sport, being the fastest would make you a winner. Being the slowest would make you think of yourself as a failure. But imagine if the actual task of the 200 meters was to run backwards, or was to cartwheel the whole thing. The fastest person would then be seen as a failure because the structure of the task has changed, not because of anything that's wrong with them. They are still the fastest, that just doesn't matter. This is the same with life sometimes. You know, there is a big focus, again, on accumulating, on being the best, on getting ahead. But if our performance metrics for the task of life was instead to enjoy ourselves, to

• 13:19Jemma Sbeg?

  love more, to experience more, to try and to fail and to learn, all, like, this whole hierarchy, this whole concept of what makes someone a success and what makes someone a failure, would change because it is socially conditioned.

• 13:36Jemma Sbeg?

  I think aside from that, on a more personal level, you know, sometimes we fear failure because we actually just don't like the idea of being seen, of being in the spotlight for seemingly the wrong reasons. You don't actually have a fear of failing, you fear failing in public. I think this is why we resonate a lot with those videos that are like, I disappeared for a year and I came back a whole new person. Like, people love those videos and I saw someone say it's because the disappearing part allows us to conceal the occasional ugliness of trying and failing. The disappearing part means that we don't have to see all the times that someone did not

• 14:18Jemma Sbeg?

  meet their own expectations or felt like they had fallen behind. Our fear of being perceived is where this comes from. Also, on another non-social level, sometimes it's just the cost of failure that scares us. Now, of course, that's the financial cost, it's also the time cost, the energy cost, the effort cost, the opportunity cost that we could have put elsewhere. When we put a lot into something and it doesn't go our way, it feels like a waste. And our natural human loss aversion, this instinct we have, it cringes at that feeling. You know, if we strip away all the social pressure, the disappointment, the comparison,

• 15:02Jemma Sbeg?

  sometimes we just really want something for ourselves and we bet everything we have on it and it doesn't happen. And that lack of a payout is what can be devastating. And this is where the relationship between privilege and failure is so important to discuss. The cost of failure, it's gonna differ for different people and that will change the psychological relationship that we have with it. From a psychological standpoint, our willingness to take risks is influenced by something that we call perceived safety.

• 15:39Jemma Sbeg?

  If we grow up with financial or social privilege, access to education, access to second chances, supportive networks, family wealth, or simply the reassurance that you can recover, your brain will learn that failure is survivable. You can afford to see it as a learning experience rather than a threat. And this creates a more secure mindset, one that supports experimentation and creativity and resilience. It's like that documentary, you know, to bring up Victoria Beckham twice in this episode. You know, someone DMed me and she made a great point that, yes, she was brave to try,

• 16:23Jemma Sbeg?

  but her company did go bankrupt and she did have a multimillionaire husband to support that. And that safety net is actually what secured her inevitable success, not just her attitude towards failure. It's easier to take those kinds of risks when you have security, food, warmth and money. In contrast, when money is tight or opportunities are scarce, you know, failure isn't just emotional, as it is with everybody, it's also about survival. And it can trigger a deep sense of danger and scarcity that some people, you know, they just may never feel that. People who have less privilege often develop what Columbia University psychologists,

• 17:06Jemma Sbeg?

  they first labeled this in the nineties, it's called a prevention focus. So a prevention focus means that their motivation for doing well or for pursuing things centers on avoiding loss rather than seeking growth. It's not like they're less ambitious or less capable. It's not even that they're less likely to achieve what they want or be successful. It's just that for them, their motivation is different and the stakes are higher.

• 17:38Jemma Sbeg?

  If you have, in contrast, a promotion focus compared to a prevention focus, your motivation is, I love the idea of winning, I'm envisioning how good this is gonna feel. I want a successful life, I want to challenge myself. It's less about, I want to escape poverty, and it's less about, I want to avoid bankrupting myself or my family, and more about what can be an addition to your life. So, when we say, don't be afraid to fail, we do need to acknowledge that that is much easier advice to follow when you have a safety net. And I just felt the need to say that because going forward, obviously, I'm gonna talk about how we can celebrate failures, big and small, but we do have to make that caveat that, you

• 18:22Jemma Sbeg?

  know, there is another part of this picture that you can't just ignore. So when we fear failure, whether because of context, attitude, psychology, upbringing, a few things happen. Firstly, I often find that the more I want something, the more I don't want to fail, the harder it actually becomes to act on that feeling or to achieve that dream, because I am so scared of jinxing it, that, you know, the pressure mounts to do and to act, but with each step, there is this constant back and forth internally that's like, well, is this the exact right next step? Will I regret my next move? And so I don't end up doing anything.

• 19:06Jemma Sbeg?

  You've probably heard of this term, um, analysis paralysis, this is what this is describing. You're so invested in the outcome of a decision that you actually can't make the decision because the possibility of it being wrong paralyzes you, petrifies you. So instead of taking that chance, you just do nothing, and as a result, you get nowhere. We may label it as different things, you may call it self sabotage, avoidance, procrastination, laziness, no, it all actually stems from wanting something really deeply, and it stems from that fear of failure. The second consequence is that you may still be able to act and make decisions,

• 19:49Jemma Sbeg?

  but you've kind of got like one foot in and one foot out. You kind of, we call it playing defensively. You hesitate before taking the leap and because you hesitate, that actually hurts you. It's no surprise that a lot of research on this has been done with elite student athletes or just elite athletes in general. In fact, one meta-analysis I found from twenty twenty one, found that in the last ten years, over forty five studies on the fear of failure in rugby players, basketball players, sprinters, I don't know, water polo players, all show that fearing failure is a significant predictor of poorer performance

• 20:30Jemma Sbeg?

  because it creates anxiety around what the next move will be. And it means that, again, people play defensively. It's almost like we fear failure to protect ourselves from failure, but it actually makes the chances of failure greater. It's all like an illusion, an illusion of control. The final cost of fearing failure is that we don't allow ourselves to experiment. Even if we can act on our desires and we do find success, we still remain quite rigid and quite inflexible. We don't try new things, we don't take risks. We can develop this deep sense that at any moment this can all be taken away.

• 21:13Jemma Sbeg?

  Even when we have success, even when we got an A, even when we got the job we wanted, we got the promotion, we got the deal. It doesn't feel good enough because now we're imagining not having it and that fear still haunts us. I can personally say this has happened to me when my podcast first started gaining listeners, not to like break the fourth wall here, but when it did and it was very unexpected, I was just paralyzed by like, this can be taken away at any moment. And I could still fail.

• 21:49Jemma Sbeg?

  I could still like, this could all just go away. And it meant that I didn't try things and that I was so like, I just felt like handcuffed to everything that I'd always done, like the first two years of the show, like, trying to make it exactly as it always was that I didn't like experiment. And it's probably only now that I've been like, okay, who cares? Like, I'm gonna try new things. There's no point succeeding at something if I don't actually enjoy the process. This is the thing that all successful people know to be true and that I have learnt from being around successful people and having the privilege to be around successful people. You cannot win if you don't have some skin in the game. You will not find love if you never open the door to the possibility of being hurt.

• 22:34Jemma Sbeg?

  You will never be considered at work if you're too scared to put your hand up and say, I want that. You will never be recognised for your art if you don't make it. And that means, starting from a place that you may not be proud of and that may make you consider yourself a failure. You know, those like times when like you've heard a quote so many times before and then it just suddenly takes on like a whole deeper new meaning for you? That, that is this quote for me, like you've got to have some skin, some skin in the game. That is like how I really am planning to live my life for the next couple of months or hopefully forever. You have to be prepared to, to fail and to maybe be hurt.

• 23:16Jemma Sbeg?

  Successful people also know that you need to have enough ego to think you can do it, but not too much that you don't think setbacks say anything other than I have more to learn or this isn't my time. You have to just be stupidly stubborn and delusional about your ideas. I read this fantastic excerpt from the book, The Anatomy of a Breakthrough by Adam Adler, where he talks about how the perfect success to failure ratio is around sixteen percent. So one in six times, sixteen percent of the time, you will make errors or you will have to make an error or you will have to fail in order to find success. And he looks at these case studies or the researchers looked at these case studies of

• 24:02Jemma Sbeg?

  all these successful people, successful businesses, successful artists. And all of them kind of came back to this failure, failure point, sixteen percent of the time. One in six times they try something. They objectively or subjectively, they failed. But once you allow that to be the case and you make room for that, that's when your progress actually skyrockets. That is the secret to success. Okay, we're going to talk about some of the other ways that you can reframe and fall in love with failure after this short break. Stay with us.

• 24:40Speaker 00

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• 25:10Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 25:48Jemma Sbeg?

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• 26:32Jemma Sbeg?

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• 27:08Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been really trying to prioritize my health in a realistic way this year and something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop, because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns so I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a thirty day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join dot whoop dot com slash psychology for your free month of Whoop.

• 27:53Jemma Sbeg?

  Okay, so I want to give you a few other ways you can allow yourself to fall in love with failure. We've been talking a lot about what successful people do differently and what that teaches us about the relationship we have between failure and thriving. And I want to cite one more study on this topic. It is one of my favorite studies of all time. And if you follow me on Instagram at that psychology podcast for a little plug, you most certainly will have heard of it. I talk about it there like probably more than I should, but it is a study by Angela Duckworth that found that more than anything else, more than IQ, even at times more than background and how you were raised, the thing that predicts

• 28:38Jemma Sbeg?

  success in people is grit.

• 28:42Jemma Sbeg?

  Grit, the ability to persevere even in tough times, the ability to fail and to push through despite difficulty. This is the thing that she found time and time again, bridges the gap between raw talent or limited talent. And actually achieving your goals and achieving your dreams. It's a tolerance for failure. It's the ability to grit your teeth and just say, I might have to suffer for this dream and I might have to be pained by this dream. And by what happens, but I'm going to do it anyway, anyways. And that's the superpower. Something to add on to this as well is that not only is failure just a part of the progress and process sometimes. It is, if nothing else, the most efficient way to get ahead.

• 29:27Jemma Sbeg?

  To fail forward. That's like the saying, right? To fail forward. You will never, and I truly believe this, you will never learn faster than you will learn from failing. Because the emotional resonance of it is going to mean the lesson is not forgotten. You know, they find this in experiments on learning and memory. People remember better when a negative experience was attached to a choice. Versus when they were slowly rewarded towards the right choice. I think it also means when you fail, you get to close doors you'd otherwise just sit staring at. And just sit and contemplate for longer than you needed to. When the outcome was always going to be the same, you just waited longer to get there.

• 30:10Jemma Sbeg?

  Personally, I think this is especially the case with love. I'm sure my friends sick of hearing me say this, but I always say to them, like, if you really like someone, don't agonize over whether they like you back or whatever, like, ask them. Make a move. Say like, I want to date you or like, I want to be committed or I want to see you. And you will get your answer really quick, either it's a yes or a no. And if it's a no, then you've just saved yourself like so much time that you otherwise would have spent worrying about being rejected or worrying about failing in this like relationship scenario.

• 30:49Jemma Sbeg?

  Failure also creates growth because yes, it is a fast delivery system for lessons. But also because through a challenge and sometimes through loss, like you gain resilience and you gain new skills. Whenever I fail, I always think to myself and I always think about um bodybuilders, actually. Really buff people and how they build muscle. They build muscle by breaking their muscle down. Intense exercise actually creates these tiny microscopic damage or or tears to the muscle, which the body then fills in and rebuilds to make them stronger. I always think about this, you have to break muscle to build it back.

• 31:33Jemma Sbeg?

  Sometimes you have to experience the unpleasantness of failure to know what went wrong, to know why it probably wasn't the right time and to come back and to do it better and to build the muscle. Failure is like is such a gift in that way, like the pain is never for nothing, like there's always some kind of growth on the other side. So when we take all of these like lessons and learnings from research and like from the lives of of people we admire, you start to really see that when you change your relationship to failure, you do become untouchable. Because the emotional reaction you have to it will no longer slow you down.

• 32:14Jemma Sbeg?

  In fact, it will speed things up because it will fuel you, it will motivate you, it will direct you. How I picture this for all of us is like encountering failure and like genuinely being like, oh my god, yes, and like celebrating it and being like, this is amazing. And maybe that's a bit far fetched that we could have such a positive reaction to it. But I like to imagine, you know, not getting the grade, not getting the job, not getting the time for your run, not getting the progress you wanted and being like. This is a goldmine for me. This is like a treasure of learnings that everyone who succeeded on their first go or everyone who didn't try, they don't get this. Like they don't get this, these lessons, like these are just for me.

• 32:59Jemma Sbeg?

  These are just for the people who try and fail. No one else gets those. You know, I can't speak for you guys, but sometimes as well, nothing motivates me more than being told I can't do things or not being successful the first time around and having to prove it to myself or maybe to others. It's, we know that this has a name. It's called the underdog effect or the rebellion theory. Your need to prove yourself or others or your failures wrong actually has such a deeply motivational power that can at times be stronger than just your own initial urge to want something. Like I have to prove this wrong.

• 33:39Jemma Sbeg?

  This rebellion effect is like, whether it's spite, whether it's ego, whatever it is, whether it's pride, it drives you and it forces you to get back on the horse. So to finish this episode, I'm going to give you some rapid fire tips to kind of ritualize failure in your life and therefore fall in love with it, to practice it like you want a craft or a skill. Firstly, I'm going to challenge you to just start when you don't yet know whether things will be perfect. Start without all the information, whether it's an essay, an assignment, whether it's applying for a job you don't quite know you're qualified for, whether it's asking someone on a date.

• 34:21Jemma Sbeg?

  This might be hard if you're a perfectionist, but the biggest hurdle I think we actually need to get over is the first hurdle. Whenever we want to do something, the first hurdle is the hardest of just being like, I'm going to act, I'm going to stop thinking about it and I'm going to do something. Getting over that initial fear that stops the impulse. I like to use the five minute principle. This basically says you can do a lot of things in five minutes and four, five minutes. So whatever it is, why not just try for five minutes and see how you feel? Try and start to write that book. Just do five minutes of writing, five minutes of painting, five minutes of this job application, five minutes of the essay.

• 35:03Jemma Sbeg?

  And you'll actually notice that you end up having a lot of momentum and you know, how much you thought this was going to be difficult. You thought that this task was going to be hard or burdensome. It's actually not, and you'll actually find a lot of joy in doing it. And it probably felt like a lot of work, but you know, the work was actually just what your mind has created to stop you from trying. The first, like the five minute principle is so fantastic for getting over like the initial stagnation or the initial, the initial fears that kind of hold you back from doing. I also say, once a month, be a beginner. Just do something that you've never done before and be terrible at it.

• 35:44Jemma Sbeg?

  I was doing this a lot last year with like pottery. I was doing, I don't know what I was thinking, but I was in this like intermediate class and I was terrible.

• 35:56Jemma Sbeg?

  I also was the person who had the most fun. Like I can objectively say I was having the most fun because I didn't care. Like I, I didn't care if this was like, it's just sometimes the best feeling being the worst at something because the only way you can go is up. And you just get to like hang out in this place of experimentation and you're gonna hang out in this place of just being completely excited by what there is to learn. I'd also ask you to be reflective and just to look back at times that you failed in the past to see how much wiser you have become because of it. You know, some of the ways I've failed is like, I didn't, I've talked about this before, like, you know, I applied for all these internships and jobs when I was first leaving university and I didn't get like

• 36:42Jemma Sbeg?

  a single one and I had to come back the year afterwards and, and apply again. And you know, luckily I got one offer.

• 36:50Jemma Sbeg?

  That first year felt like a failure. I came back and I was, and I was doing better the second time, at least, you know, I had a job by that stage as well. Like so many failures that it's almost hard for me to even call them out as failures because they've just been integrated into my life as lessons. Like obviously I did my half marathon um a couple of weeks ago, right? And there was a lot of failure leading up to that, runs that I just didn't finish, runs that were like I walked, that just felt awful. It's hard for me to even see those as failures because like they had to happen. I had to get them out of the way to get to the good stuff. I'd also say try and have a process for what you will do or give to yourself

• 37:33Jemma Sbeg?

  after you have failed. Almost make it like a date night, like the day after you realize like, oh my God, I maybe I have to quit this thing. Maybe this will just not work. Maybe this is a so-called failure. Reward yourself. Go take yourself out for dinner, get a glass of wine, get some pasta, bring your journal and just write down everything that you learned from that. Everything that this moment has taught you that is going to really help you in the future. And I also want you to be very diligent and honest with yourself about what was within your control during this situation and what was outside of your control, what you can change,

• 38:17Jemma Sbeg?

  what you are responsible for and what you are not. Now, in absorbing failure, that doesn't mean that we need to just be like, well, this was all my fault. I just need to work harder. I just didn't have it in me this time. Sometimes it is just timing. Sometimes it is just the situation and it is just context and it is just that someone worked harder than you or someone got to the idea before you or someone had more privilege than you. It's important to acknowledge those things so that you don't take the entire burden of a misstep or a missed opportunity onto yourself, but also realise and take what can be changed and make sure that that is the more important thing.

• 38:59Jemma Sbeg?

  The most important thing is what you choose to do with the circumstances and also what you can learn from the previous situations and apply. So acknowledge it, but don't linger for too long and just take the lessons. And remember what I said before, those lessons are something that the person who tries, the person who just like succeeds in their first try, sorry, does not get, this is like, you are the only one who gets these lessons. I'd also say just try and get more comfortable with sharing failures. I'm so lucky, I have friends where we do this all the time. We talk very openly about the things that didn't go right and that's honestly just so reassuring sometimes and just so comforting to be like, okay, someone else has been here.

• 39:45Jemma Sbeg?

  And just remember that if you are going to fail, the best time to do it is now. Especially if you're in your twenties, I know most of us are, it is the psychology of your twenties after all, like this is the failure decade. I really don't think that you're actually even an adult until like thirty. This is just like your trial period, right? This is like the probation period for your job. This is the probation period for your adult life. This is just where nothing, like you can just try and fail and just like completely, maybe even make a fool of yourself, hopefully not, but like just completely be a beginner

• 40:26Jemma Sbeg?

  and it won't, it won't do anything other than make things better in the future because you have learnt. And will make you a more empathetic person, will make you a wiser person, will probably make you a more successful person rather than if you just sat and waited for everything to be perfect without ever actually learning a lesson from your mistakes.

• 40:52Jemma Sbeg?

  I will also say, a quote, a final quote that has been resonating with me when we talk about failure, when we talk about having big dreams for ourselves, which I really hope you do, I hope you have big dreams for yourself, is a quote from The Alchemist. I recently reread that book. It's one of my favorite books. I've read it so many times and it felt like a great time to reread it. And in the book, there's this very famous quote, "When you have a dream, the whole universe conspires to make it come true. When you really want something, forces beyond you will conspire to make it happen." I don't know if that's true, to be honest, but I felt it. I felt what I think is a version of it. And I think it's something to really

• 41:33Jemma Sbeg?

  hold on to, that wanting something and acting on it is never not going to be rewarded in some way or another. People love to see people who are working hard. People love to be inspired and motivated by people who go after their dreams. That's you. That's going to be your situation. Those can be your circumstances where the universe, God, the source, whatever it is, just the powers that be are conspiring in your favor because you have had some skin in the game. You've put yourself on the line and said like, "I'm willing to sacrifice and learn for what I want." So I think that is all we have time for. You guys know I've been

• 42:15Jemma Sbeg?

  doing this thing where if you've made it this far in the episode, hello, welcome. Thank you for listening. I've been asking people to leave stories or leave something in the comments that, you know, is just for the people who've made it to this point. And today, I really want to learn from your failures. What has been the biggest failure in your twenties? I want you to share, if you feel comfortable, the details of it below, or you can be vague about it, just so that we can learn from each other and also so that we can feel That this is a normalized, that this is important. Particularly if maybe you're in your later twenties or even not in your twenties at all. What was something that you failed at in your early twenties that you're glad that you did?

• 42:58Jemma Sbeg?

  I really wanna, I really wanna know, I want, I wanna be able to learn from that. Make it feel more normal and just like a completely natural part of growth. But I appreciate you listening as far as you have. If you are not already, make sure you are following us wherever you are listening to the show right now. On Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, on the iHeart Radio app. We have December guest month coming up in a, in a couple of weeks, no, in like a month, not a couple of weeks, several weeks. And I want you to be around for that because, oh my gosh, we have some insane guests this year. I just finished recording with one of them earlier and the conversation went for over two hours. Don't know how I'm gonna cut it down, but make sure that you are around for that exciting chapter.

• 43:41Jemma Sbeg?

  Each year I love doing our guest series, so I can't wait for you guys to hear it. And that you're following us on Instagram as well at that psychology podcast. We also have a YouTube and we have an Instagram. Um, no, I already said that we have a YouTube and we have a Substack. If you want the transcript to the episodes, including this episode right here, you can follow us there. It's obviously completely free. But until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, embrace, celebrate, fall in love with failure. And we will talk very, very soon.

• 44:19Jemma Sbeg?

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• 44:56Jemma Sbeg?

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• 45:41Jemma Sbeg?

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