Episode Transcript
Gary (00:00)
Welcome to quiet the noise where we reveal practical tactics and systematic ways to quiet the noise in our lives, leading to smarter and more fulfilling living. Welcome to quiet the noise. And this episode on failure, I'll dig into how does vulnerability enhance our understanding and experience of failure. I'll touch on the role that failure can play in creating a sense of belonging and connection with others.
Why do I sometimes view long -term projects like ZeroDB, my beverage through the lens of lost time and failure? How does emotional pain contribute to personal growth and the development of intuition? How can embracing contradictions like those in Daoist philosophy shift our perspective on failure? Why it's critical to align our understanding of failure with the belief in personal growth and how can doubts both hinder and drive us in our journey towards personal and professional success?
amongst many other questions. You know, today I want to talk about failure. In the past, I've talked about resilience, I've talked about managing change. And I want to talk about failure, not just because failure is, you know, spoken of quite often these days, but because I'm not sure the way we approach failure is the way we should be approaching failure. You know, these days, failure is kind of tethered to vulnerability.
So, you know, vulnerability is having its day right now and everybody's walking into being vulnerable and. Vulnerability is great. Vulnerability is a way to connect with people, you know, if somebody's being honest, truly honest with what's inside their mind, you know, it allows other people to kind of connect with that part of themselves.
And I find when I hear really, really genuine stories about people overcoming quote unquote failure and having hard times, there's a kinship in the struggle. And I've talked about that. It's a term I've used multiple times, but I find there's a lot of value in that. There's a lot of value in feeling we're not alone, you know, in Emily Smith's book, the power of meaning, one of the core tenants of meaning is belonging. And when you can connect with someone at very visceral level.
It makes you feel connected. It makes you feel like we belong, we're all in this together. And I think that's where failure, when spoken of kind of with the right intention, I feel that's the impact it can have. It can really be almost a beacon, a lighthouse for people who have almost ended up in a place of learned helplessness, where they feel like they're the only ones who fail. So I'm going to dig into failure and
What I want to do is I want to avoid how I think failure is commonly used today. And it's for attention. You know, a lot of people, you know, have these big stories about how they failed, yada, yada, yada, but it always ends up in overcoming in a way that, you know, look at me, you know, I've overcome this and now I'm great. And there's nothing wrong with that. Look, I'm not criticizing, but it's not necessarily what I'm getting at right now. You know, for me.
failure or call it growth. Cause really they are essentially the same thing. Failure isn't something that I end up on the other side of feeling amazed about myself. It's quite the opposite. You know, if I'm being honest with myself, you know, I don't feel good about myself at all when I fail and there's no amount of blogs I can write or podcasts I can record to make me feel any better about myself.
you know, and this is deeply rooted and you know, in the end, can intellectualize that, you know, this is going to help me going forward. And obviously it does, you don't make the same mistakes, but deep down I'm still that kid, right? I'm still that kid who's a kind of hardened himself and really hopes, you know, nobody will find me out. You know what I mean? It's kind of like, you know, maybe this is the true me and you know, maybe I'm the only person who goes through things and doesn't grow from it.
So I'm still that whatever, four to seven year old kid who has a big chip in his shoulders. So that's the narrative I have when I, you know, toss around failure in my mind. So what I want to do today is I want to talk about something that I'm going through right now and really how I'm processing it. So let's cut to the chase. So, you know, I am in the process of selling my beverage brand zero DB. So that is a,
It's an interesting time because it's been 11 years since I started my company. 11 years is a long time. So if I multiply 365 by 11, it's just under, you know, 4 ,000 days or just over actually. So 4 ,000 days and you know, 11 that's 600 weeks. It's, you know, you're getting into a long, long time and regardless of all the growth.
you know, selling the beverages, selling my drinks is, you know, it's, it's a lot of reconciling. It's tough to swallow in a lot of ways. And it feels like the last 11 years, when I have that quick conversation, like if you catch me off guard and you say, man, it must be tough. You're selling the drinks. The first, the first feeling I'll have is, wow, that's a lot. That's a, that's a lot of life I've lost and a core decade, right? It was my forties.
So selling the drinks, I've been journaling a lot. I've been writing about how I'm going to introduce the fact that I'm selling the drinks to the world and not that the world really cares as much as I think, but you know, I've been, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this. So when I look at the past 11 years, I look at what I consider, you know.
not necessarily where I wanted to end up, call it failure, cut a lot of growth. I guess the first thing that comes to mind is, you know, why did I fail or why didn't I succeed the way that I wanted to succeed? So then I kind of start doing the math. I'm like, well, I could have done this. I could have done this. Why did I stick with this so long? Why'd I stick with that so long? You know, why did I spend countless months on something where deep down I really wasn't.
I really wasn't that compelled that it would work out, you know? So I asked myself all these questions and it's so funny because all these counterfactuals like going back and living things over again, it's so counterproductive. You know, I was that person back then making that decision. And when I started kind of deciphering all these decisions and why I made them and why I didn't choose differently.
I started to review the metrics on how I looked at my quote unquote failure. So all of that is based on my products or software or whatever becoming a commercial success. Okay. So that's how I, that's how I defined success is commercial related to money. Obviously being successful and adoption, people loving the drinks, yada, yada, yada, all these things.
But I've never really considered honestly that, you know, at every moment it's how much I grew. Okay. So then I look back and I say, okay, well, when you look at growth, okay, what does growth really mean? So, you know, I think about all these decisions and I think about the impact these decisions had and all the pain I had at the end of each of these subsequent mini failures, you could say. And.
I guess what gave me a bit of peace and what has given me peace is the fact that the pain you feel is always.
It's always the counterpoint to the growth you're going to have, right? You know, the more you feel something, the more it's going to be ingrained in your mind. And the more it's going to become part of your intuition, part of that unconscious mind, because it really is the stuff you feel, you know, you can know things. But again, I've said this a million times, you can know things, but actually having that as part of you, part of your unconscious.
It's something you have to experience. It's something you have to feel. And when I think back and I think about all of that pain, like, it's such, you know, I don't know if you can relate, but for me, it's a, you know, it's imposter syndrome combined with feeling stupid, feeling like a loser at times. It's just so muddled. And I sat with that for so long and I often sat alone with that and it left a really big mark because, know,
Any growth is time under tension. And there was a lot of tension there. And I started to spend a little more time with it. And I started to realize that it's kind of like that Seinfeld episode, you know, the bizarro episode where, you know, George does everything the opposite or actually that wasn't the bizarro episode. It was just an episode where George does the opposite. And he goes up to a girl and, he says, you know, hi, my name is George. I'm bald fat and I live with my.
mother and I'm unemployed and, and she gave him the time of day. And it, it kind of made me think about maybe, maybe the way I'm looking at this is all wrong. You know, maybe it's the opposite. And, I'm a big fan of doubt a chain and loud Sue and, know, going over those tenants. And it's funny. A lot of those things are contradictions. They're juxtapositions, you know, you know, for example, you know, all your desires are filled when.
You really have no desire, you know, you got to walk into the dark to see the light, all these things, they're contradictions. So when I look at how I assess and how I judge this failure, quote unquote, maybe it's the opposite. Maybe it's the exact opposite of everything I feel. Maybe I should feel incredibly buoyed by this. Maybe I should feel incredibly energized by this, that I have a million ways I'm not going to make the same.
unconscious decisions that I've always made, you know, and I think that is, you know, it's, it's kind of ironic because, you know, again, that's an intellectual kind of assessment, intellectual meaning it's, you know, the way I think about it, but do I really believe that? Right. And kind of that's what I'm wrestling with right now. And I, I know it's true. I know it's true, but do I really feel it yet? but the more I talk about it, the more I'm going to feel it.
It's like doing the rosary. did the rosary overnight. And I'm telling you, when you say something to yourself over and over again, it sinks in. So we look at these contradictions. So if we look at the opposite of everything, so instead of feeling down and like a failure, well, maybe I should again, be driven by this. Maybe I should again, realize that my unconscious mind is making all these new decisions that are going to be different. And these new decisions are learnings from what I did wrong.
you know, the pain that I felt. And I think one of the interesting kind of switches is even when we look at metrics, success being material based, you know, we have to eat and everything that's obvious, but success really is about growth and really about making better decisions that are aligned with you going forward. So in essence, the more you fail, the more you feel and the more you actually, adjust going forward and we'll make different decisions, you know,
You know, I always, you know, throughout this journey as well, I started, you know, I started to reflect on doubt, you know, and I feared doubt. you know, I always was unsure and I always doubted myself, but it was really the doubts that made me humble and work hard all those times. And it's almost like those doubts are the, it's almost like, like a pre -cog it's, it's kind of preconceived failure.
And it made me humble and it made me work hard and it made me have compassion and be generous at the same time. So when I look at the culmination of all of that, you know, it's just ways that I try to convince myself that I'm in a better place. And right now with all the changes in my life, I start to try to connect the dots between this, you know, perceived failure in my professional world for this stint.
And you know, what else I have in my life? So I start to look at my life and I start to look at it through a balanced perspective. And I start to see, okay, well, let's look at these past 11 years and let's look at the rest of my life. Let's not just look at these commercial successes or failures. And I started to see how really my foundation has been completely, completely shaped.
You know, I got into this 11 years fairly egotistical and I don't know how, how much less egotistical I am. think I'm a lot less. that sounds like my ego right there. you know, I went into it solely focused on material success and I still like things, but I do see it very differently. You know, I was a different person in every way, you know, every decision I made had a.
set rules at the beginning of those 11 years. And I think when we look back, when we look back and we reflect on failure, it's always interesting to look at time zero and then look at time now and say, okay, who was I back then? What was my character? You know, was I humble? Was I compassionate? Was I honest? And I went through this and I started to look at each of these on 10. So, you know, we have our eight pillars.
And I started to look at each of them, generosity and self mastery and curiosity and all of those metrics being the character pillars that we espouse all the time, all of them improved measurably. And again, I was trying to be objective as best I could. The best would be to talk to my friends and family to see how I've changed. And, know, I've gotten feedback and, a lot of them would say that I've changed a lot. still have a long way to go, but when I look at, you know, those metrics and I.
kind of see that as the opposite of your success, your classic success driven metrics, you know, just making money and being, outwardly successful and famous, let's say, this is really an inward expression and you know, the way we classically look at it, it's an outward expression. It's an external validation we're getting, whereas kind of the journey that I'd like to be on now is really being more self -assured.
and be more confident about what I am as a person. And that's a complicated conversation about what I am as a person. But when we look at this contradiction, when we look at the opposites, then it starts to make a little more sense. And then I start to say, okay, now, if this has shaped me so much, if all of this failure, quote unquote, has shaped me so much, then how is that going to benefit me going forward? How am I going to make those decisions going forward?
And I start to look at my life right now. I start to look at my family. start to look at my new baby girl. start to look at, what I'm working on professionally. I start to look at how I spend my time, who I spend my time with. And I've realized that this flywheel has started to finally turn, you know, there was a lot of unwinding. find failure. The beauty behind it is it's a big unwinding. It's a big stripping you down of all of those things that you can only strip down.
with failure. know, success doesn't breed change per se. Failure breeds change because we're learning a hard, hard lesson. And I think genetically we're predisposed to learning those hard lessons. So failure is a necessary evil for true growth. And again, that can be argued in a million ways and that's a big statement. But when I look at it and I try to understand these contradictions and try to reconcile this feeling of feeling like loser.
And having not succeeded with really what's important to me. And if it's not about ego, if it's about intrinsically who I am, then I've succeeded in an amazing, amazing way. And I think oftentimes, you know, we can watch these videos and see these memes about failure and how it's a great thing and, you know, fail forward and we should all fail and failure is growth and all this. Yeah, it's true, but.
It can't just be left at that. can't just be left at trivial memes. It has to be something that we start to really, really believe because it's the believing that matters. It's not the knowing that matters when it comes to failure. Again, this is all a caveat with being my opinion. So what now, right? So what do we do with this failure? What do we do with these learnings? And I guess it's, I guess it's more of a calibration that's needed because if you don't reconcile.
that that wasn't a waste of time. If you don't see failure, if you don't feel that it's a positive in your life, it's going to hold you back. It's going to be constant noise. It's going to be constant doubt. And again, doubts can make you humble. Doubts can make you work hard, but everything can be over flexed. And I find as we inch into greater and greater challenges, as we get older, we have to build up greater and greater resilience and less and less doubts about our abilities to kind of
have less and less noise to overcome what we're trying to overcome. You know, the challenge is the dragons get bigger. And if we don't evolve with that, we're going to be left behind. So when I'm going to this next chapter of my life, you know, there's going to be a reckoning of sorts. Obviously I'm going to say bye to the drinks. I'm going to say bye to that old skin and try to better understand who it is that remains.
And I think if we all kind of look at it through that perspective, it becomes a very empowering experience. It gives you back agency, you know, you know, the growth mindset is often talked about versus fixed mindset. So feeling like you have influence over the future, this is a very powerful thing. And really again, it gets down to belief, you know, and I said, if you don't believe, then your behaviour is not really going to change. And I think this belief is super important. You've heard of thoughts or things.
And again, it gets back to the fact that we have to just change the way we're thinking about our lives going forward. And essentially, if we think that we have control and we think that we'll be successful in this, in this new way, excuse me, of looking at it, it's just going to make us happier and more fulfilled. So, you know, that's, that's what I wanted to touch on when it comes to failure at this time in my life. I think it's something that I could.
think about, talk about, for days, for weeks. because it is a battle that'll probably have till the end of my life. And that is feeling good enough. And, know, you can be told you're good enough, till the cows come home, but really again, if you don't feel it, it really doesn't have that much value. So I hope everybody is doing great and I hope, you know, you just appreciate this riff on, on failure.
You know what, this next little stint is going to be an exciting time in my life where I'll share the successes of my little girl. And I think it's, I think being forced to look outside of yourself is a good thing. And I think that's going to be something I'm going to grow from immensely. And, with her, I know I can't fail because I'm going in with definitely only pure intentions. So that's it for another episode of quiet the noise.
If you think someone could benefit from this episode, from the podcast, please share it. You know, I'd love to hear from you. If you have any questions or you want to reach out, or you just want to chat, let me know. I'm easy to find at Gary James LeBlanc on Instagram. can DM me and, most importantly, I hope, you're slowly quieting the noise in your life and we'll see you soon. Take it easy.
