9 - The F Word

Continuing our discussion of the acronym "Be Free" we talk about the F word. Failure.Episode Transcript: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Zero Percent. I'm Menachem Lehrfield. We've been discussing the topic of the growth mindset. Last time we talked about the idea of enjoying the journey. And today we move on to a crucial and important topic, which is the understanding and awareness that failure is not a permanent condition. So we've gone through the B and now we're up to the F in FREE, which is again, failure is not a permanent condition. A wise man once said, "Trying is the first step to failure." That was of course, Homer Jay Simpson. But the truth is, he is absolutely right. Trying is the first step to failure. You can't really fail if you never try. The thing is, it turns out failure isn't really so bad after all. In fact, studies show that we are actually more likely to learn something better when we're given the opportunity to fail and get it wrong.If you have a test and you're asked a question that you know nothing about, if you actually try to come up with an answer, even if your answer is completely wrong, you are more likely to understand, know and retain the information once you learn the correct answer. This goes against a hundred years of education where we try to drill our children with these math drills. We try to have our children memorize these words and these definitions and these multiplication tables. All of those things were there because scientists believed, which was wrong, but they believed that if you teach someone something wrong, it would be so much more difficult to unteach the wrong information.What we know now is, is exactly the opposite, that when you give a child or a person the opportunity to get the answer wrong, to fail, to make a mistake, they're more likely to retain the information. So instead of saying, memorize all these things that you never get anything wrong, now let's try to figure out how we go through the process of understanding, how we go through the process of learning. In Judaism, not only as a mistake or a failure not bad, it's actually good. It's actually the process that brings us to success.In the book of Micah, in Micah, chapter seven, verse eight, the verse reads, "Do not rejoice over me, my enemy, [foreign language 00:02:37]. Because I fell, I will arise." And I've seen people translate this as despite the fact that I fallen or although I have fallen, I get up. But that's not what it means. The word [foreign language 00:02:49] does not mean despite, it means because of. [foreign language 00:02:55]. The falling is what leads to me getting up. We find a similar source in the book of Proverbs 24:16, where the verse says, [foreign language 00:03:07], because the righteous one falls seven times, he will arise." Again, not despite the fact that he falls, he gets up. The falling is what leads to getting up. The darkness is the source of the light. The failures are what lead to the success.I don't know if you remember, but Michael Jordan did an ad for Nike. It was a print ad. And in it, it says, and this is a quote from Michael Jordan. He says, "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've 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."Thomas Edison said the same thing when they asked them about the light bulb. It took him 10,000 tries to produce the light bulb. And someone said to him, "How did you have the ability to keep on going after failing so many times?" And he said, "I didn't fail 10,000 times. I learned 10,000 ways that it doesn't work. I discovered 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb." When that's our approach to failure, everything changes. You see, we're obsessed with this concept of the overnight success. But the reality is, Albert Einstein said that somebody who's never made a mistake has never tried anything in their life.You see, the world tries to sell us the story of the overnight success, the person who just like that turned their whole life around and became world famous and successful. And the reality is it does not exist. If it was overnight, it was not success. And more likely than not, if it's success, it wasn't overnight. See, we just see the end result. We see the Michael Jordan. We don't see the fact that he was cut from his high school basketball team. People look at that story and they say... And I've heard people say this. "Michael Jordan's coach must feel like an idiot." Can you imagine being the coach that cut Michael Jordan from your basketball team? But he didn't feel stupid. Do you know why he was cut from the basketball team? Because he wasn't good enough.And when he came home from school and he told his mother that he got cut from the team, his mother didn't say, "Oh, you poor thing. I'm going to go down to the coach and yell at him," which many parents would do today. But you know what she said to him? "You weren't good enough. Now here's a basketball, go outside and try harder." And that's what made him into Michael Jordan.You look at so many people who have succeeded and you think, oh, they had it so easy. Look at Oprah. Nobody's more famous than Oprah. She was told she wasn't fit for TV. Walt Disney was told he wasn't creative enough. Thomas Edison, we said, failed over and over and over again. Steve Jobs was fired from his own company, the company that he started himself. He went from literally nothing, a college dropout, created a company in his parents' garage that had 0% chance of success. He built it up from two people to over 2000 employees, made this huge company, and then they fired him.If you would've asked somebody 30 years ago, "What would be the world's most valuable company?" and I understand it's not currently, but it will be, give it a couple of months and it was for a decade, "What's going to be the world's most valuable company?" They never would have told you to it'd be a computer company. That that's unfathomable. He completely revolutionized the world's technology. But what's amazing, and the point I want to focus on it, yes, it doesn't mean he was a nice person. Walt Disney was not a nice person either. And it doesn't change the fact that he completely created an industry that didn't exist before, and he was an extremely successful person. And we can learn from a person's success without necessarily idolizing that person as a good human being.But the point I want to focus on is that you can look at that experience. I know if it was me, if I was in my 30s and I was a... I don't know if he's a billionaire at that point. He's probably a billionaire at that point. Either way, he was set for the rest of his life. He suffers a public firing where it's on the front page of almost every single newspaper or magazine that he is fired from his own company. If it was me and I had enough money to live easily comfortably for the rest of my life, I would retire and be done. What did he do? He started two companies, Pixar next. And he says that getting fired from Apple was the greatest thing that ever happened to him. Because while he got fired and he was working on all this other stuff, that's what led to the renaissance of Apple.I don't know if you remember. I remember growing up. Apple computers were like these dorky old... You couldn't do anything cool or fun with them. Do you remember the big floppy disks? You'd stick them in with two hands and like crank the thing, the drawer, to close it. What changed and revolutionized Apple was when Steve Jobs came back to the company. And that's what produced the iPod and the iPhone and the iPad and those cool iMacs that have that all in one funky colorful machine. And all of the things we have today never would have existed had not got fired. It was specifically that failure, that challenge, that created that impetus for him to pivot and pivot and pivot, to eventually create all the things we see today.So if you asked him... I mean, we can't ask him anymore, but he said this publicly many times. Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that ever happened to him. Michael Jordan not making his high school team was the best thing that ever happened to him. Oprah, being told she wasn't fit for TV was the best thing that ever happened to her. It's those failures that allow us and propel us to that next level. It's not despite the falling it's as a result of the falling. Because if I can get up, I've got it made.On Rosh Hashanah we blow the shofar, and there's three different types of shofar blasts. There's what's known as a tekiah, which is a strong blast. It's a triumphant blast. Then there's the shevarim and the teruah, which are broken blasts that are supposed to represent crying, weeping. We never blow a shevarim and a teruah by itself. It's always sandwiched between two tekiahs. So we'll do a tekiah, shevarim, takiya, takiya, teruah, tekiah. And the idea that we're giving across is that all's good in the end. If it's not good, it's not the end. Failure is not a permanent condition. I might be down right now, but that's not the way it's always going to be. I have the ability to rise up. I have the ability to change. And if it is truly bad right now, I know it's not the end. And therefore, whenever we have that blasts that are represented by the shevarim and the teruah, the blast of crying, the blast of weeping, the blast of sadness, it is always followed by that strong tekiah, that triumphant blast.For full transcript, visit: www.joidenver.com/zeropercent/9---the-f-word