This is an All-Ears English Podcast episode 2068.
How to Be Fearless When You Fail.
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Are you feeling stuck with your English?
We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent
by focusing on connection, not perfection.
With your American hosts, Lindsay McMahon,
the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan,
the New York Radio Girl, coming to you from Colorado
and New York City, USA.
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When a four-year-old asks you,
what does failure mean, what do you say?
Today, here's some examples of how we are reframing
failure and success for more satisfaction and communication
and life.
Hey, Lindsay, how are you?
I'm feeling good, Michelle. How's everything going with you?
Everything's good. Everything's good.
I'm happy to be recording with you today.
So I wanted to share something with you.
My four-year-old son is getting smarter by the minute.
And he is starting to ask a lot of,
instead of really little kids like ask,
why, why, why?
Just randomly about everything.
But now he's starting to ask me some really deep questions
about deep topics.
And some of them are easier to answer than others.
But one recent one stood out to me
is something I wanted to talk about on the show.
Do you want to hear what it was?
Yes, let me know. What did he ask?
And this is a question that I feel like a lot of our listeners,
no matter the age,
no matter the stage of life, they're going to relate to this.
Right?
For sure.
So the question he asked me was,
what does fail mean?
So,
like,
I, it was hard for me to answer that question.
And we're going to talk about that today.
We're going to share,
you know, what we think about the definition of the word fail.
We're going to talk about some quotes about failure
and how this relates to our listeners as well
in language learning.
So I'm sure if anyone has a kid in their lives,
they know, you know, they ask the definition of words
and some of them are, you know, pretty easy to answer
and some are left easy to answer.
And this is an example of one that was tough for me.
What do you think?
Yeah, it relates to all of us, right?
But it's such a key moment for a kid when they become aware
of the concept, right?
Because sometimes I wonder, you know, words make us aware
that the thing actually exists
and that it's a thing that society talks about.
And it's kind of a loss of innocence a little bit, right?
Because becoming aware that there is failure and success
is in its sense in a sense a little bit
of a loss of innocence, you know?
That's true.
Yeah, now he's starting it here.
Yeah, like now he also, he has bad dreams.
He asks about bad guys.
He'll say to me, like, are there any bad guys in this world?
And I'm like, my gosh, how do I answer the question?
Like, you know, how do I answer that?
Or what else did he ask me?
Are there any bad guys in this world?
I don't know, he's taught, he now he talks about death
a little bit and I'm like, oh, no.
Well, we can only have time today for the failure issue.
But we're going to go into the failure one.
But guys, before we talk about that,
make sure that you hit follow wherever you are listening
to the all ears English podcast.
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Yeah, hit that follow button.
I mean, I think this is a cool opportunity for any of our listeners
to redefine what failure actually means.
And for you as a parent, Michelle, to define it in a special way
for your son to set the stage, right?
Like, yeah, I didn't want to say, oh, it means
when you don't succeed, right?
Because I didn't want, I don't want to put a fear of failure
in his head.
And this, this relates to everybody.
This is not an episode only about kids, right?
This is, you know, it just kind of was kind of a deep question
to me because I also want him to have him think
that failure is part of the learning process.
And it's a good thing because it means you tried, right?
But I, but I also don't want to shield him too much either.
Like he should know the basic definition of the word.
It's more, I think the concept that is the more complicated part.
What do you think?
Oh my gosh, I have a lot of thoughts on this.
I mean, I think a lot of it depends
on how the parents act around failure, right?
What a kid learns, right?
And I also think there are certain things
that parents can do.
Like one thing that sticks with me is, you know,
I think your name is Sarah Blakely, the inventor of spanks,
you know, spanks, right?
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Okay, what are spanks, by the way?
Just to let our listeners know.
They're like these like, I don't know.
They like the kind of like leggings or short leggings, right?
And they, yes, like hold in your tummy.
I don't really know.
They're kind of a hot item or they were.
They had a major boom.
Women love them.
Super popular, interesting product.
Like they sold, I think if you can build all the company,
I'm pretty short.
She's always, she's been on Shark Tank.
On Shark Tank.
Okay, I love that.
But once I read somewhere and I think this is true,
it can't be 100% sure, but I assume it's true.
Is that in her household every night,
they would sit around the table and the parents would ask each of them,
how did you fail today?
Yes.
Yes.
Oh gosh, I remember that.
Yes.
She got that on Shark Tank.
Oh, she did, okay.
So, or maybe, or maybe, no, maybe it wasn't some interview,
but I heard that too.
So I find that so telling for what she eventually created,
which is a product that was a little bit outside of the box,
but served a need and became a wildly popular product.
It's the way parents talk about failure.
Right.
So what do you think, like, why do you think that was so powerful,
like, saying, how did you fail today?
If that's what it was like.
Because I think the under kind of most conversations in households
for kids growing up is more like, how did you, you know,
how did you succeed?
Like, what good things did you do?
And that's staying in the box of thinking.
And why would you take any chances if the goal is to succeed?
Right.
Right, exactly.
So that's what, yeah, that's what this is about.
Like encouraging kids that, okay, failing is okay,
taking chances is okay, but at the same time,
not being like, oh, just go fail.
All your, you know, like don't go try, you know?
You're right, right, right.
There's a fine line for sure.
And so our listeners, by setting up for yourselves
a new spectrum, you know, and that's why we created
this idea of connection, not perfection,
because that comes the goal, right?
That becomes success.
So you could grammatically make a mistake,
but still succeed if your goal is connection, right?
Exactly, yeah.
Exactly.
So guys, before we get more into this,
make sure you listen to episode 2054,
was avoid running into English traps and glass doors.
So, but let's talk about this more.
So, you know, I found a couple quotes on failure
from Forbes.com that I thought would be good to highlight
because they really tie into this idea.
Would you agree to read the first one?
Yeah, what would be the first one?
So here's the first one.
I have not failed.
I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
And of course, that was by the guy who invented
the light bulb, Thomas Edison, right?
And imagine what he did for our society.
I mean, an incredible contribution.
And that's kind of what it takes
to invent something like that.
That really is kind of what it takes
to create something so important is filling so many times.
Yeah, 100%, 100%.
And also another one is Coco Chanel.
She said, success is most often achieved
by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.
Oh, I like that's really interesting
because it's kind of cynical
and also very optimistic in the same quote, isn't it?
Right, right.
It has like a few different meanings, right?
It's like, yeah, wait, I mean,
do you think failure is inevitable?
No, well, I think it depends on how we're defining it, right?
On this show, I know how we define success and failure.
I think it depends.
You create in a way we all create our own reality.
We create our reality field.
And we can go out into the world.
I mean, yes, you have to pay the bills.
Yes, you need shelter, whatever it is
that you need to survive in life.
But beyond that, we can define a successful day
and an unsuccessful day or project as we want.
So I can't really answer that, Michelle.
That's true.
That's true.
So yeah, this is complicated.
It really takes a lot of deep thinking about what is failure?
What are you okay with taking it as a learning opportunity
to get to the next step?
And I think, yeah, because if Thomas Edison, like,
you know, had just Ted his first failure and said,
ah, forget it.
There's no way trouble.
I mean, I know, you know, I think I do think I would say
failure is probably inevitable in some point in our lives
and something we're all going to fail at some point in something.
I mean, I know that in the startup world,
especially the venture back startup world,
they are very proud of their failures.
Like, usually they'll introduce themselves to investors
by saying, I failed in my first three startups.
And now I'm ready for, yeah, I'm raising money for my fourth, right?
And that's actually considered a good thing
that the investors want to invest in someone who has failed before
because they assume that they've actually learned more
than people who have never failed.
Because the person's probably not built anything before, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think that people have such a fear of failure
that it can just make you free, does not do anything.
And so I think the person who has the mindset of,
okay, if I fail, I fail and I'm going to learn from it,
they're going to be the ones to get something faster
than the person who's so scared that they don't do anything.
Oh my gosh, 100%.
I think once we start moving and put things in motion,
it just becomes so much easier.
And yeah, maybe you do fail, quote unquote,
but then it's never as bad as we think it's going to be, right?
We always imagine this nightmare scenario and it never is, right?
There's always another way to recover from that.
Yeah, yeah, I love that.
And guys, we wanted to just take a moment to say thank you
to our reviewers because we feel so lucky
to have such amazing listeners who review us.
Lindsay, would you want to read some of them out?
I would love to thank you, Michelle.
So thank you to Armon S. H from Finland, Juppie TT from Korea.
And this particular reviewer said best podcast
for English learning and gave us five stars.
We love that.
Thank you.
Yeah, we love it.
Also, thank you to Dorna Mosal and Najad
and Sherry Cha from Taiwan who also left five stars
and said, all there's English podcast is amazing
when you start to listen to it.
You'll love it immediately.
Michelle, how does that make you feel?
All those reviews.
Amazing.
We love hearing from you.
The more listener interaction, the better.
We love to hear from you guys.
So we were really appreciative.
Oh my gosh.
And one reviewer wanted to know where they could find
the text of the episodes.
So great question, guys.
If you want to see the transcripts from this episode,
you can actually get them delivered to you by email
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Okay, Michelle, we are back.
So what, did you say again?
What did you say that you probably wouldn't reply?
I don't remember exactly what I said,
but I think I, let's see,
I think I wrote it earlier in the episode.
I mean, it was something along the lines of failure
being part of the learning process.
But maybe if you don't succeed the first time,
but all of this goes over his head.
He's great.
It sounds like a very high-row answer for you.
But I just didn't want to say to him.
It means when you don't do something right.
Like that would have been, you know,
because that sticks with him.
He remembers things.
So what could I say to him?
I thought I could say to him, like, you know,
looking back, failure is just another chance to learn.
Or I could have said, failure is what shows you
what you can do better next time.
So I thought, like, maybe if he brought it up again,
I could say those things.
Any, what would you say?
Yeah, I think along those lines is good, right?
Opportunities for improvement, right?
Yeah, I think it's, in my opinion, like it's,
and this is for adults and any, any age,
it's less about what we say.
It's more about how we act around it.
Like when you fail, Michelle, right?
In your life in front of your kid, maybe at home,
something goes wrong.
How do you react in that moment, right?
It's more about that, I think.
Yeah.
So that's the real challenge for all of us.
Yeah, leading from example and just, you know,
total.
Yeah, and then, I mean, this, I brought all of this up
because it reminded me so much of our listeners, you know,
just like this idea of, you know, freezing up,
being afraid to use the language.
We talk about this stuff all the time,
but I feel like we can never talk about it enough
because it's so, it's so true.
And, you know, it just relates to them, I think,
especially with Lindsey, you mentioned it,
connection, not perfection.
That's what we believe.
Totally.
So when we change that goal,
we redefine success and failure, guys.
That's where we get the freedom in our minds
to go after connection.
And that's going to lead to a happier life, right, Michelle?
We're here to be happy in the end.
Do you agree?
I mean, I agree, I agree.
Yeah, so guys, we need to find that for yourself.
Connection, not perfection.
Is there any takeaway for today's episode or is that,
I mean, is that it?
Is there anything else?
You're not basically going to take risks, guys.
Volunteer, make new friends, try things to hear on the show.
See what will happen, you know?
And maybe one day I'll do a follow-up
on how to answer a little kids' question.
Yeah.
You don't have to answer, because I'm sure a lot of our listeners
would want to know the answer to that.
So what can you change situations?
But this relates to so much more than little kids, guys.
Yeah.
I think everybody has a feeling about failure.
Can remember a moment in their life where they feel,
you know, maybe there was some failure there.
And what does it mean and kind of redefining it in a way?
Totally, I mean, I'll give you a practical example.
So in a couple of weeks, we're having the podcast conference
here in Denver, right?
I'm excited that it'll be in Denver for the first time.
But I was invited to be on two different panels.
For some reason, two different groups, you know.
People I've met over the years,
I've been invited me to be on their panels.
And I could have said no.
I could have easily just said no.
I just want to attend like usual, maybe set up some meetings.
I'm just going to be in the audience, but I accepted.
And yeah, I might say something silly.
I might feel a little embarrassed at times,
but I'm going to stand up there on that stage
and just with the goal of helping people understand podcasting.
Right?
That's right.
That's an example.
So I would encourage you guys, our listeners.
What is your next moment of stepping on to the stage?
Quote unquote, right?
What is it going to be and redefining failure?
What is the success metric, right?
Love it.
Love it.
Oh my gosh.
All right, well, I'm glad we had this deep talk.
Guys, don't feel fear failure.
And we will see you on the next episode.
All right, good stuff, Michelle.
Talk to you soon.
Bye.
Bye.
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