How to fail successfully
April 2017
Not easy to do, discovers Abhishek Thakore
uccess is tough, failure is tougher.If you’re a regular reader of this magazine, chances are that you are already borderline enlightened. You have a healed relationship with money, with yourself, with relationships and with healing itself.
Chances are you are already successful.
But have you tried to fail? Like, really, really fail? You may be surprised at how difficult it is.
Let us start with wasting an hour of your time. Wasting, as in, utterly and totally wasting. Doing nothing. No-thing. Yes,
siree! No walk in nature, no zen koans, no watching your breath. Nothing at all. A wasted hour without any design.
You will soon see that planning and managing an hour of time is much easier than utterly wasting it. (Rumours are that the
last time someone did this, they invented a meditation technique)
Hang on! Don’t scamper for a self-help book (we know your favourite fix!). You will find that while there are 3,50,000 books
with ‘success’ in their title, there are under 23,000 books with ‘failure’ in their title.
Which means there are 15 books for success for every one book on failure (a potential market!).
Who do you go to if you really want to fail? None of your gurus can advise you because they are highly successful! Every
day, they successfully dodge questions, dress to kill and attract followers.
Try to fail at something else maybe.
Try to fail at eating – skip a meal. If you do it often enough, you will succeed at something else – losing weight.
If you manage to lose a few matches of tennis or chess with someone (deliberately), you will succeed at finding someone
who loves you very much (who doesn’t love a losing opponent?).
If you fail to take care of your stuff (and hope it gets lost or stolen), you will succeed in creating more space.
And finally, if you fail to read Laughing Buddha, you may just get enlightened!
Abhishek Thakore is a stand-up philosopher, full-time lover of life, and the founder of The Blue Ribbon Movement.