How not to fail

The other day, one of my clients said something that floored me. We were discussing how she defined success as an author. “Well,” she said to me, “I don’t have a failure plan. So I’ll just keep writing until I reach my goals.” Her idea of success wasn’t selling a certain number of copies or making a bestseller list. It was staying in the game—no matter what.

This is simple—and profound. Everything changes when you take failure off the table as an option. You show up with focus and determination. You figure out how to work smarter, rather than harder, because you know you’re in it for the long haul. You don’t see setbacks as signs that you’ve chosen the wrong dream. Instead, they’re just part of the process.

I won’t lie: it’s not always easy to approach your goals this way, especially when everything in our culture tells us to be “realistic.”

Eliminating the possibility of failure means being flexible with your timeline. It’s okay to set time-specific goals, but if you don’t reach them, just extend the date—or let go of it altogether. (The paradox is, when we stop worrying so much about how long it will take, we often work faster because we’re less stressed.)

It also means recognizing that spending time on other endeavors (e.g. a day job or side hustle that pays the bills, or even parenting or caregiving for another relative) doesn’t delegitimize your big goal or mean you’re not “all in.” You’re just doing what you have to do in order to support yourself as you work toward creating what you want.

More than anything, taking failure off the table means building and maintaining the belief that you will reach your goal, even when it looks like it’s miles away. (I’ll talk more about building new beliefs in a future newsletter.)

So ask yourself: Do I secretly have a “failure plan”—that is, a plan B that I’m ready to put into action when it seems like my writing goals aren’t within reach? If so, what would change if I let go of that and decided success was inevitable?