No Fail
Failure Doesn't Exist
I heard the most incredible interview with Kobe Bryant saying that there is no failure. Now, I’ve been chewing on this idea of failure for a while, maybe a few years, that failure is okay, that there’s no failure because it’s really just attempts, and until you quit there’s really no need to think about it as failure, you’re just not there yet.
That idea came from David Goggins - attempts. I love that. But to hear Kobe say it shook me in a different way. To hear David say it was like hearing a reason to doubt the idea and to reframe my thinking - don’t think of it as failure, think of it as an attempt. Don’t quit, keep going, you haven’t failed yet.
But hearing Kobe insist that it’s made up hit me in a different way. He was so clear about it - there is no failure. I had a shift in paradigms when he said it’s a weakness.
Hate
Motivation
The interviewer speaking with Kobe asked him which kind of player he was. Which category did he fit into. She asked about his motivation. About which thing he hated. I don’t mean to pick on the interviewer, because it was a comfortable, casual conversation, steeped in our language, the language of culture, of sport.
She asked if he hated losing or loved winning. He said neither. And then pivoted to talk about failure, as if to educate us. Not just the ones who had never thought about this before, this limiting belief, but to further change those of us who are seeking truth.
A dawning
There is no failure. This epiphany, if I can call it that, lead me to greater freedom. An epiphany is an insight. I knew the concept, failure isn’t a bad thing, it’s okay to fail, you can keep going and make another attempt - but to flat out say that it’s an illusion brought me to a new realization. I realized what he was talking about. My reality changed. I was now in a world, the world where Kobe lived, where failure simply didn’t exist. I had an insight that told me it’s not just something I can discount, but something I can completely throw away.
It dawned on me that when I have no concept of failure, that I don’t stand in my own way. There’s no oppressive mental veil preventing me from trying. Because that’s what the specter of failure does, it stops you from even making an attempt.
Losing
Winning and failing
Kobe responded beautifully to the question. He said:
I play to figure things out, I play to learn something. Because if you play with the fear of failure, or if you play with the will to win, if that will supersedes your fear of failure, it’s a weakness either way.
- Kobe Bryant
He went on to say that if you play with the fear of failing then you’ve put extra pressure on yourself. You’re mind is in a future scenario. This goes back to the Bhagavad Gita and the notion of over-emphasis on outcomes.
He said that if you play with the desire to win, then what happens if you don’t. Let’s not get into desire here, because that’s a huge subject. Desire appears to be demonized in Buddhism, and is misunderstood. Desire comes up in Jung’s work and is misunderstood. Desire is good, but where we put it and how we think of it matters.
Anyway, check out the interview, because there’s more that I’m not going into here, and I want to move on to other things. I want to explore how failure prevents us from being here in the moment and in the future.
Time
We can want to win, but playing with the desire to win is different. We are already there because we love winning. That’s a reason we are playing in the first place. But is it the reason? What Kobe is saying is that it’s a weakness to play to win. He said he plays because he has something to learn.
Playing with the desire to learn is a beautiful manifestation of playing in the moment, honoring the past, and pushing an edge into the future, as poet David Whyte would say. He speaks about edges. If we’re playing to learn more then we’re using our memory, and this body that was honed over years of practice, and we have a genuine desire to improve in the future.
That perspective puts desire in the right place. Because if you wanted to win then you’d make different decisions in the moment, you’d try harder to score when you might be better off passing to a team mate or being more defensive because you’re not in the best position to be the winningest player on the court.
The middle way
Finding common ground
Kobe said that you need to have a reason to play, because in that moment you can be distracted by the fear of losing or the desire to win. I’m paraphrasing here. What he said was that he tries to be dead center.
He said he tries to be connected to playing and not feel anything other than what you’re playing. When he was asked how to become the kind of person who doesn’t seem to be afraid of failing, he said it doesn’t exist. That’s the mic drop moment. I remember in the 80’s and 90’s all the talk around having no fear. It was so misconstrued. It became a sticker, a clothing line, a lifestyle brand. People were confused.
Kobe said that you should find common ground in the middle - I think he was talking about in between winning and losing. He said that if you find the center then you’re not afraid. That’s a gem right there. Find the center, and push the edge forward in the moment.
Quitting
It’s okay to quit, in fact it’s a trait of a successful person to quit. I’ve read Seth Godin’s book, “The Dip” many times, and I get that knowing when to quit is an important skill. I knew that failing is okay, and that if you can anticipate a pending failure correctly then you can pivot and win. I knew that. But I wasn’t prepared to totally let go of the idea of failure.
I’ve let go of certain concepts as totally useless. Some I’ve just put in their right place, because something like anger is absolutely necessary, but used in the wrong way it can be toxic and dangerous. Guilt is also a very unnecessary concept - I don’t even want to call it an emotion, because regret might be a better word for what people mean when they use the word guilt. Guilt, in our culture, is synonymous with shame because they’re both predominantly used as a verb. That’s dangerous and not useful.
Kobe underscores Godin’s point by saying that the only way we can fail is by deciding not to progress along that path. This is where we can learn from nature, where there are no scores, no grades, only experience. That’s a powerful perspective.
The illusion
Failure doesn’t exist
Kobe said he plays to learn something. That’s why I do many things, because there are a lot of things I like to do, and right now I’m writing to learn something. I want to know what I think about failure. And I’m so grateful for this basketball player giving me, and the rest of the world, his wisdom. That’s mastery and we all need to learn this level of understanding, of knowing, that only full engagement in a craft can show us.
What does failure mean? Seriously, it doesn’t exist, it’s a figment of your imagination. What does it mean?
- Kobe Bryant
This is a brilliant understanding. Again, go and listen to the interview and see how he explains it (link above). He talks about happy endings, and I realized that Disney was fooling us. Maybe they didn’t mean to, but I’ve heard my wife talk about this before. The notions that Disney gives us a false sense of the world, like the American Dream. It’s a narrative, a thing to aspire to, an idea.
The illusion of time
Time is a wonderful illusion. Sometimes it’s a tyrant, but time, when we understand it and our place in it, can powerfully connect us to our past, and set us up for success in the future. David Whyte talks about our inheritance of the past, your own past and all of the beautiful things that came with it. Your culture, your family history, your genetics, your memories, all of theses aspects of your identity make up your past and it lives in you like a being.
The memory, the thoughts that inhabit our consciousness are a part of that inheritance, they are our past. Not just your individual thoughts and memories, but the collective memories of being a family and telling stories. Remembering things together over the holidays with your family is a powerful way to connect with the past, yet it’s gone.
It’s a figment of your imagination, in a sense, because it’s a remnant of your life - the experience is gone, it’s over, but the memory of that experience lives on in your mind. That shared story with your family is real in the sense that you share the memory and validate it. That memory has life when you retell and relive those stories. That’s powerful.
The future
Ideas are powerful
The past is a burden and is your inheritance, and the memories that make up your consciousness make up who you are today. We value those ideas, that identity, that inheritance of what made you. In the same way, ideas that we’ve held onto shape the way we are in the present and how we move into the future.
If we believe in failure as an idea then we are likely to make the mistake of playing to win or losing and considering it a failure. There is no failure, it’s an illusion. Unless you make it real, and that’s the power of your imagination. If you don’t believe in failure, or you choose to accept it as an idea but don’t hold onto it - if you find the center and stay connected then you’re not ruled by the specter of failure.
Acceptance
There is power in acknowledging something and yet believing it as false. We have invented the idea of time. Still, we accept it. We have language that defines the way we think about time, the methods we use to structure our lives, the way we plan our vacation. We accept our language as a way to connect. Our lives are based on the way we think about time. If there are 12 months or 13 months, it makes a difference. The number of days in the week determines our work and rest and play.
We determine how we think about who we are, where we came from, and what we’re doing here on this planet based on when we believe time began. Some people believe we’re not even from this planet. Time plays a very powerful role in how we think about our lives and our places in it.
When we think about the future we consider how much time we have left. As if that will make us behave any differently, yet it does. If you have 6 months to live your plans will look drastically than if you were planning for your retirement a week earlier. If you thought the world was going to end when the Myan calendar ended then you had a different view of the world than you do now. Our view of time shapes our reality. We accept the made u idea of time and allow it to have authority over us.
Motivation
Trust
Accepting time and the ideas we have around time underscore how much power we give to ideas. Not just ideas about how we think of the past and the future, but how we engage in the present moment. Accepting something is to love it, to allow it, to not just acknowledge it but to make it a part of your life, a part of yourself.
When we accept something, like time, or language, we abide by it. We arrange our lives around it. We accept that it has power over us because we are actually giving it power. The same is true for the way we think about failure, whether it exists or not, and how we bring it into the present moment.
When you play, do you think about winning or losing? No, you play. The same applies when you played with toys (or anything else) as a child - there was no winning or losing. That’s an idea. Competition is a different subject, but it drives this vision of failure. If you play to win, you come at it differently than if you play for the enjoyment, or to learn.
Play
When you play to find out something, you are trusting your curiosity. What drives you now is your interest in learning more, getting to a deeper level, being open to understanding more about your team mates, what they need, how you can apply movement in your body to put the ball where you want it to go.
When you’re motivated by curiosity instead of a desire to win or a fear of loss, your behavior changes. That’s a major aspect of behavior change - far more powerful than building or breaking habits.
The science of habits was fun to learn in the last 10 years with the explosion of research and content on the subject. But changing your behavior just doesn’t have the same impact as changing the way you think. Humans are mostly motivated by the fear of loss. The desire to win is also hugely impactful - that’s ambition. That’s competition.
Accepting and believing an idea like failure is very powerful. It’s not just a word, it shapes how we act and behave in the world. Nothing gives us more freedom and allows more trust than the curiosity that comes with play. There’s no place for failure in that space. That’s where we truly push the edge into the future with an open mind and true desire.
Thank you for joining me here to explore what failure means, or if it means anything at all - that’s for you to decide.
You are a philosopher Andrew! I greatly enjoyed this. There are many ways of looking at certain truths of life. You explored all the avenues. All of it resonated with me!
Many thanks for this, I was especially struck by the line ‘he plays because he has something to learn.’
I was speaking with a trusted friend today about failure, in terms of long term relationships, looking after family, the fear of failure when seeking future work.
In addition, I should add I joined Substack a week or so ago to a) simply to enjoy and, indeed, share short pieces of poetry and b) then delete FB and Instagram and similar.
However, I have found I am enjoying some of the longer Posts, such as yours, which seem to have caught me at the right time - and yours has certainly resonated with me this evening.
Thank you for sharing, please count me as a new and interested subscriber too!