Yay, I Failed!

Yay, I Failed!
Many people have trouble with the word failure because they link the act of failure to the person: I failed; therefore, I’m a failure. I’d like us to re-appropriate the term. Try this one on:

Failure is finding out what doesn’t work.

It’s our job to try something hard, maybe fail, reflect, try something else. What you don’t want to do is never fail. If you never fail, you aren’t doing anything difficult or interesting. “Yay, I failed!” stands in for the celebration “Yay, I tried something hard!”

Remember the Acrobat

Did you fail this week? I hope so. Most people don’t like the phrase, “I failed,” I say it all the time, and I’d like you to try it out. Say it with gusto. Say it this week. Here’s how: Remember the acrobat. Catapulted into the air, she turns her body with precision, tucking, twisting,

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Failure of a Falsifiable Hypothesis is Success, Plus Dating Statistics

“There is no such thing as a unicorn, little boy.” This is what’s called a falsifiable hypothesis, a claim that can be proven false. Failure of this hypothesis would be the production of a unicorn. Conversely, the hypothesis, “Unicorns exist,” is not falsifiable. You cannot prove this claim false because, even if there are no

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How to Accept Setbacks with Grace

I remember in black and white an old routine, maybe it was Dick Vann Dyke, in which the protagonist descends a staircase in an amusing demonstration of life’s non-linear progression. Each step downward was accompanied by hesitations, switch steps, and several steps backwards up the staircase. I have know idea how he actually made it

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One Damn Good Reason to Try to Kick Ass

One year ago I made an audacious public announcement that I was going to stop sucking and kick ass for 12 months. I bound myself to rigid rules and set big goals. With the support and wonderment of many loving humans I set out on a grand experiment to see if sticking to my plan

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Seek Progress, Kill Perfection

I always wanted to be a great man. I’m not, so far. How we describe our goals makes all the difference, not only in how we feel about ourselves, but in how we behave. Most of us understand the folly of perfection, but it’s very common to hold up our lives to unattainable ideals. Write every

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When Whining Wins

I don’t want to write. I don’t want to write. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t. Whaaaaaaaaaaaa! I remember a short conversation with another bleary-eyed father about the purpose of whining. His answer: “There is no reason to let your kids whine. It will never serve them. There is no effect other than repulsion. They must stop.”

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But I Tried, Didn’t I? Goddammit, at Least I Did That.

It may be a little late for the season, but I figured out what we can give each other. First, a story. The old pickup truck was no match for the slippery hill. The back wheels spun a dozen times for every inch they gained, and the fresh coat of snow only made the ice underneath

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Lance Armstrong: Why I Cheated

“Good … [clears throat] Good morning. I’ll get right to the point. “Yes, I cheated. “Yes, I lied about it. “I lied because you wouldn’t like me if you knew I was cheating, and you wouldn’t have let me keep winning. I love to win, and you loved it when I won. What a

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Shadow Roles Drive Us from the Back Seat

Our shadow roles whisper old familiar stories in our ears and, without our realizing, slip the wheel from the Pilot’s hands and steers us over an old familiar bridge. We’ve been here before, the same argument with a boyfriend, the same feeling of shame at an interview, the repeated internal declaration, “lazy,” as we soak

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The Great Thing About Rigid Rules

Generally speaking, rigid rules are for small-minded, scaredy cats. And so, for my Plan to Stop Sucking and Kick Ass I made a few rigid rules. For one, I’m giving up TV for a year. To me that means no video at all: no Netflix, no Hulu, no Daily Show, no porn, no random TED talks, no

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