When I was researching my book on resilience, I discovered something so obvious it blew me away.
I think I was around nine years old when my dad bought me the Complete Major League Baseball Statistics, a frayed paperback with a green cover. I treasured it and kept it in my room for years. I flipped through it so many times.
As I paged through the numbers, I started noticing something interesting. Cy Young had the most wins of all time in baseball (511). He also had the most losses (316). Nolan Ryan had the most strikeouts (5714), and the most walks (2795).
Why would the guy with the most wins also have the most losses?
Why would the guy with the most strikeouts also have the most walks?
It’s simple—they just played the most.
They tried the most and moved through loss the most.
When everything rests on the numbers
Sometimes, achieving something really is about quantity over quality not the other way around. I’ve asked wedding photographers how they manage to capture such perfect moments. They all say the same type of thing: “I just take way more pictures. I’ll take a thousand pictures over a three-hour wedding. That’s a picture every 10 seconds. Of course I’m going to have 50 good ones. I’m throwing 950 pictures away to find them!”
Sometimes, when I’m doing Q&A after a speech, someone asks me a question along the lines of “So, congratulations on the success of The Book of Awesome. My question is: How do I get paid millions to write about farting in elevators?”
To me, this is like asking, “So you won the lottery. How do I win the lottery, too?”
I always answer the same way, with a reply I stole from Todd Hanson, former head writer at The Onion. He said that whenever someone asks him the question “So how do I get a job writing jokes for money like you did?” he gives a straightforward answer:
“Do it for free for 10 years.”
We cannot hack our way to success
Today, we’re surrounded by tales of companies with million-dollar valuations that grow at lightning-fast rates. We hear about tiny startups that Google acquires for billions of dollars, just a few months after launch. We want to read about the fastest way to get a six-pack or accelerate our careers. But ultimately, what we want to find—quick fixes, easy answers, shortcuts—isn’t there.
Some things take time. They take time. They just take time. It’s not about the number of hits but rather the number of times you step up to the plate. The most important questions to ask yourself are:
Am I gaining experience?
Will these experiences help?
Can I afford to stay on this path for a while?
Sometimes? No. Other times? Yes. And either way you’ll help yourself see that you are learning, doing, and moving—even if that means lots of failure on the way.
“I’m a big fan of poof”
Seth Godin, bestselling author of over 20 books, offered similar advice in an interview with Tim Ferriss: “The number of failures I’ve had dramatically exceeds most people’s, and I’m super proud of that. I’m more proud of the failures than the successes because it’s about this mantra of ‘Is this generous? Is this going to connect? Is this going to change people for the better? Is it worth trying?’ If it meets those criteria and I can cajole myself into doing it, then I ought to.”
And in and interview with Jonathan Fields on Good Life Project, he said, “I’m a big fan of poof.” What’s poof? The idea that you try and if it’s not working—poof. You go try something else.
I’m writing this article as part of my research, lessons, and ideas on resilience in You Are Awesome. That book came out over a year ago now. Is it a hit? Is it a flop? Honestly, it almost doesn’t matter. Because, either way, the only choice I have is to move on to the next thing.
Sure, I want it to succeed. But I can’t determine that. All I get to do is take more pictures. All I get to do is keep going with my next book, next talk, next project, next whatever, whether this one is a hit or goes poof.
You need to do the same.
Success stories are not stories of success
We need to stop looking at successful people with the lens that their lives contain a success that led to a success that led to another success. Because you know what we’re really looking at? Not success, not really. Just people who are just really good at moving through failures.
Moving through failures, swimming through failure, recovering and going forward from failure? That’s the real success. Successful people get to where they’re going because they are willing to try something when the possibility of failure is high … they know and accept that and don’t shy away from it.
So when it comes to long-term success, remember it’s not how many home runs you hit. It’s how many at-bats you take. The wins will only pile up if you keep stepping up to the plate.
This is an edited excerpt from You Are Awesome: How To Navigate Chance, Wrestle with Failure, and Live and Intentional Life