Failure Is Not Loss: Losing Is Much More Than A Setback, It Silently Tampers With Who You Are
Failure is not loss.
Every time you allow a marginal loss you are subconsciously normalising self-destruction.
Every time you fail in pursuit of growth you expand your capacity for achievement.
You must fail, you must not lose.
There is a significant difference between failure and loss.
To understand why, we must understand marginal losses — the ingredients of self-destruction.
Marginal losses appear individually meaningless; when they happen once, there will rarely be an unmanageable repercussion.
No sweat, right?
Wrong.
Their venom lurks in their effect on your posture towards losing.
When you make a minute mistake that can be rectified after it’s occurrence, you become accustomed to future rectification, not pre-emptive action.
As you make that mistake more frequently, the chances of you rallying any effort towards it’s prevention slowly dwindles.
Becoming comfortable with overlooking pre-emptive action is the same as becoming comfortable with losing.
Why?
Every action you take influences your identity.
Each time you permit marginal losses to go unchecked pre-emptively — you permit a vote towards the identity associated with it.
You accept being a loser as part of your identity.
You accept that, to some degree, you are a loser, and to you, that’s fine.
Well, is it?
Is that who you want to be?
Perceived manageability is what made you accept losing, but what happens when it becomes unmanageable?
What happens when your perception is wrong?
Aggregate marginal losses are the accumulation of all those tiny little “hiccups”.
Whether it’s prospectively or pre-emptively, aggregate marginal losses are much more frightening to face.
Let’s play a game.
I’ll throw a speck of snow at you from 20 centimetres away.
The rules of the game state that your goal is to avoid damage.
The game will go on for a hundred rounds, all you have to do is avoid getting hurt.
Easy, right?
The twist is, any speck of snow that you don’t swat will be collected into a bank for me to use in the final round.
Although you’d like to think you’d swat each and every single speck of snow for a hundred rounds, we both know you won’t.
Why not?
The answer is twofold.
- The lack of danger from each individual bit of snow will lull you into a false sense of security, especially since the objective is to avoid damage.
- The effort required to swat each and every speck of snow 100 times will diminish as the rounds persist, especially since the perceived threat is miniscule.
I bet you’d initially feel very comfortable. And so would I; it’s completely natural.
However, on the 100th round, how confident are you at dodging a snowball from 20 centimetres away?
The repercussions of not making the small efforts, quickly become prospectively costly.
Marginal losses are just like snow.
A better illustrative example, however, might be sand.
If I threw a grain of sand at you, would you even notice it in my hand? Let alone feel it?
However, sandstone, a sedimentary rock, is formed when many grains of sand are compacted and cemented together over thousands of years.
If I threw a slab of sandstone rock at you, it’s no shock that you would do anything to avoid the results of it’s impact.
Notice the change in posture.
Nothing changed about my action; I simply threw sand — both times.
The striking difference is that when neglected and given time, something marginal can transform into something you cannot stop without future cost.
The process of aggregation transforms something docile into something life-threatening, and much like sand and snow, marginal losses are exactly the same.
If good habits are the ‘compound interest of self-improvement’, then bad habits must be the compound interest of self-detriment.
And this is the crux of the matter.
Failing to reach your goal and allowing a negligible loss are fundamentally different.
The former is based on effort; you have to try to fail.
If the basis of your action is effort, the aggregation of all those tiny efforts will not lead to demise; the compound result must be success.
The latter, however (a negligible loss), is posited on inconsistency and overconfidence.
What do you think all those little grains will look like when they become a collective?
That’s why marginal losses are the ingredients of self-destruction. They are nothing but the subconscious normalisation of self-detriment.
When a mistake happens once, it’s a mistake. When it happens thrice consecutively, that is the formation of habit.
Why are the formation of bad habits so scary?
It’s simple, to achieve aggregate marginal losses you must become comfortable with the self-identity of a loser.
It is the subconscious acknowledgment, that I AM A LOSER.
That’s what you tell your brain every time you skip that extra, necessary effort. No matter how small it may currently seem.
But, to achieve aggregate failures, you must become comfortable with the self-identity of a tryer.
However you write it, as a dream-chaser, a successful person, the person you want to be is a tryer — someone who fails.
To fail, you must step into a realm beyond your “current” — to fail is to go beyond.
That is nothing like being a loser.
And this applies to every aspect of real life.
From cleaning your room to workplace habits, it is completely relevant.
If you’ve gotten into the habit of cleaning your room everyday before work, the single instance when you’re in a rush and fail to do so, and again gloss over it the following day is how that once good habit becomes completely undone.
And all it took was one instance to get the ball rolling.
You taught yourself it was fine.
However, when you cannot find your house key, because of the accumulated mess, all those small efforts you failed to make will become that much more poignant.
I bet in that moment you’ll wish you never forsook your habit.
Remember, once is a mistake, but do not let it occur twice.
Make a conscious effort to stop negligible losses from accumulating.
They don’t simply inconvenience your future; they change who you are.
James Clear summarises this clearly when he writes:
“Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits.
Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits.
Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. You get what you repeat. “
Do not allow losing to become a habit.
Failing to reach your goal, on the other hand?
Go for it.
Failure Is Not Loss
LM
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