Credit to Nate Soares for this helpful thought.
”Failing with abandon” means that once you fail to meet your goal, you decide that there’s no point to even trying a little bit anymore, and so you fail extremely.
For instance,
- Suppose you were on a diet, and then ate a spoonful of ice-cream. You might then say “I’m a pig! a lost cause!” at which point you will feel even worse about yourself, and eat all the ice-cream as a stress reaction.
- Suppose you want to get to bed by 10, and its 10:30. This does not imply that you should just stay up super late. Just go to bed.
I think the reason that we fail with abandon is because we start berating ourselves and then choose to indulge in the action we detest because we feel bad. I think the antidote is to not be so harsh on ourselves. Having this level of trust for yourself might seem scary. You might think “if I stop berating myself for falling short of my aspirations then I’ll never get better”. But I’ve found that if you have some trust and respect for yourself instead, this can often cause yourself to become more mature. Once you realize that no one is going to stop you from acting in ways that you wish you wouldn’t, you can finally assume responsibility.
To summarize, I think it’s very important to have goals, aspirations, and to try to bring yourself into alignment with the person that you’d like to be. A lot of well meaning people have expressed concern when I say things like “I have goals, I have preferences over what the universe looks like”. I think that the reason people worry about this is because they worry that I’m setting a high standard for myself, and will inevitably be disappointed when I can’t attain it. I agree that this is a real risk, although I think it’s a risk worth taking. But, the strategy I recommend for handling the situation where you fall short of your goals is to be kind to yourself.
Although it’s good to not fail with abandon, it’s better to not fail at all. I discuss this more here: 100% is easier than 99%