Be a failure.
Let your parents think you’re wasting your potential. Let your friends call you stupid for chasing something they don’t understand. Let society label you as “another dreamer.”
Embrace it all. Be proud of it.
In a mediocre world where most quit after one mistake, getting back up, again and again, makes you a winner.
The Uncomfortable Truth
You will be wrong. You will make mistakes. You will fail.
The reason? You are pursing something of value. Pursuing an unconventional path. Doing something very few, sometimes no one, have done before. The truth is that anything meaningful requires effort, resolve, and sometimes even struggle. Inner growth and experiences very few are willing to go through.
Why? Human nature. But that is a topic for another letter.
Value is in direct relation to the effort and sacrifice required to have it. If success was easy, everyone would have it. And if everyone had it, what value would it have?
Value demands something from us.
Effort creates meaning.
Struggle builds strength.
Sacrifice reveals priorities.
What we had to go through to get something is what gives it value.
Success Requires Sacrifice
Successful people failed more often than most have ever tried.
Steve Jobs? Fired from his own company.
J.K. Rowling? Rejected by 12 publishers.
Oprah? Told she wasn’t fit for TV.
They failed and got back up… Time and time again.
The sacrifice?
Comfort, weekends… Instant gratification. They trade short-term ease for long-term growth. They chose purpose over pleasure. Vision over validation. Success isn’t about what you achieve. It’s about who you are willing to become to achieve it.
If you’re not sacrificing for your dreams, you’re sacrificing your dreams.
Most people let a setback define their entire identity. They turn a moment into a permanent story about who they are. “I tried and failed” becomes “I’m not cut out for this. I’m not good enough.”
Listen, you haven’t failed until you quit.
As long as you’re getting back up. you’re winning against all who gave up. You are winning against your own self-imposed limitations.
Every mistake is feedback for course correction. Every "no" brings you closer to "yes."
Getting back up and learning from what happened is all that matters.
How to Fail Like a Winner
Never giving up makes you a winner.
But failing time and time again to make the same mistakes time and time again? That’s being stupid. The value of failure lies in what it teaches us. What went wrong, why it went wrong, how and where we need to change. Each failure shows something that is wrong, and as we fix each of those wrongs, we get closer and closer to success.
Most people give up here. They get back up without examining why they fell. They repeat the same patterns, make the same assumptions, wonder why nothing changes.
Failure examined with honesty becomes education.
That education, acted on, becomes growth.
Failure acted on become change.
What went wrong?
What skill was missing?
What assumption was incorrect?
Turn failure into something that will serve you.
Failure is the Way
You are only a loser if you quit.
As long as you're still in the game, learning, adjusting… You're in the process. And the process is where growth happens. Success isn't the absence of failure. Success is failing enough times, in enough ways, until you learn what works. Each failure eliminates a way that doesn't work, bringing you closer to the way that does.
In this light, failure becomes the way to success, if you're willing to learn from it.
Perfection is the least important thing here.
Success doesn’t need you doing everything right. It needs you focused on the path for long enough, learning from everything that happens. Each time you get back up, you're winning against everyone who gave up.
The path reveals itself to those who keep walking. The answers come to those who keep asking questions. The breakthrough comes to those who refuse to break.
The only real failure is the failure to try again.
The Noise
As you walk the Way, people will talk.
They’ll call you stupid. Dumb. A dreamer… Let them. In a mediocre society, the most common response to ambition is the idea that it won’t work because it’s hard. Most people give up, so they'll be right 99% of the time when they predict your failure.
These are the odds of a mediocre society, not a reality about yourself.
One day, if you keep getting back up, there will be that 1% when it happens.
The one time that will change everything. The 1% that makes the other 99% irrelevant. The 1% that made you right 99% of the time. And now? The mediocre “always believed in you.”
The people who were “always right” are now the ones who were always wrong.
Welcome to success my friend.
Do something different and you'll attract criticism. Do something meaningful and you'll face resistance. This doesn’t mean you're on the wrong. This is confirmation that you're on a path worth pursuing.
So get back up… Again.
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Practice
Where have you failed in life but succeeding matters more than anything else?
See it for what it is, a path worth taking, and by nature of anything of value, a path that ain’t always easy.
What can you learn from your set backs? What can you do different next time?
Go through that analysis every time you fall and do something different next time.
When Nothing is Given, Create.
Fortune Favors the Creator.
To Be a Creator, Create.
- Caio