Avoid failure. Avoid life.
We spend our lives trying to avoid failure. And in doing that, we avoid something else. The very thing that makes us feel alive.
Avoid failure. Avoid life.
Most of us spend our lives trying to avoid failure. And in doing that, we avoid something else.
The very thing that makes life alive. Risk!
What a NO RISK life looks like.
Imagine if I gave you the iPhone 34, with its built-in NO RISK MODE. Every decision is guaranteed. Every outcome is predictable. Every move is safe. You’d love it for a week. Maybe a month. Then you’d feel it. Flat, bored, and switched off.
Uncertainty creates life.
You’re dead bored because certainty doesn’t create life. Uncertainty does. Taking risks!
Life feels alive when something is on the line. When there’s an edge. When you don’t know how it’s going to land, and you could fuck up. That’s the signal you’re in it.
Embrace failure.
At Wieden+Kennedy, the agency behind Nike and Old Spice, they don’t hide from failure. They put it on the wall. Embrace failure.
Every bold idea they ever put into the world came with risk. With doubt. With the real possibility that it could fail. And there isn’t a finer example of this than “I’m on a horse.” The campaign that saved a dying brand.
Remove the risk, and you remove the idea. As the saying goes, “No Risk, No Story”.