Yesterday marked the start of the astrological new year so I’m pretending that that’s why I skipped the February newsletter.

Anyway, I want to talk about failure because I think we should make this the year we fail at stuff.

There is a common axiom that you can’t know joy without pain, happiness without sadness, abundance without scarcity. Classic yin and yang, right? Except we don’t treat failure and success that way. Failure is and always has been framed as something we should fear. Only in the hindsight of success do we praise failure.

I wish more people told me when I was young that failing was evidence that I was learning. Instead, it was framed as if I was doing it wrong.

We need to do more to glorify failure. Apparently Sarah Blakely’s dad asked her every night how she failed. That’s a good practice to start shifting the frame from which you view failure.

I’ve been reading about successful people lately. Can you guess the consistent thread running through each person’s story? Correct, it’s failure.

Not only is failure part of any great man’s story, our modern day greats have made failure their curriculum. Bezos, Buffet, Naval, they all study the failures of Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Edison, Ben Franklin, etc. because humans repeat behavior and learning from the failure of the greats can help accelerate your own success.

Here’s another idea about why we should embrace failure (or whatever emotion we fear):

To experience the thing, we must know its opposite. The catch is, we need to remember this when we experience failure. Because our instinct is to run or to quit — it’s what we’ve been conditioned to do. Instead, we’ve got to welcome failure and ask what we learned.

Join me in failing this year. Get excited when you fail, see it as evidence that you are venturing out into the arena and taking chances to build the greater vision. I talk about failure as feedback in a recent podcast. Listen or subscribe »

A few book recommendations on this topic — all of these are pretty fast reads:

• On Writing and Failure

• Discipline is Destiny 

• The Creative Act: A Way of Being 

Reprogram

I’ve been noticing my patterns and this time I’m doing something about it.

Dr. Joe Dispenza says that by the age of 35 we’re mostly a memorized set of emotional reactions. We basically live on auto-pilot and it becomes especially hard for us to change. But we can. Here’s how:

Relax

There’s an idea that’s been filling me with optimism lately, in part because there are a lot of Cassandras out there proselytizing the end of the world. ‘SVB’s failure means the economy is crumbling!’ ‘U.S. debt is way too high!’ ‘The Fed!’

Maybe it’s all true, but there is no other place IN THE WORLD where you have as much potential as you do in the United States. Our country is deeply fucked up, but not a moment goes by that I don’t recognize the freedom and opportunity I have here that simply is not possible anywhere else — to create a business, build a dream, and turn nothing into something. Don’t take it for granted.

Deep tweets

Lol tweets

Love you bye,

Alex

P.S. I started my business and I’m documenting it on my podcast. If you know anyone looking for a copywriter, please send my information along ❤️