“You can't fail privately” ~ Ben Afflek What does it take to get to the next level? How can you make sure you're setting your goals at the right level and more specifically not too small? You've probably heard the saying, no pain no gain, but how do you leverage this to find the right amount of risk for a goal? How can you break out your comfort zone? You do it by leveraging the statement, "You can't fail privately".
Hunter Powers: Welcome to The One. I'm your host, Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital DC Proper, Washington DC. Today's one idea is you can't fail privately and this idea comes from Ben Affleck, who as I best recall made the statement in an offhand remark during an interview for the show Project Greenlight. You're probably familiar with Ben Affleck as he is an extremely famous actor. My favorite film of his, it was one of the early ones, was Goodwill hunting where he co-starred with Matt Damon and went on to win an Academy Award. Although notably an Academy Award in screenwriting, but it was also an excellent acting job and an excellent movie. If for some reason you have not seen it, Good Will Hunting.
Hunter Powers: Now again, this quote, "You can't fail privately" heard in an offhand conversation during an interview for the show Project Greenlight. Project Greenlight was a reality show where Ben Affleck and Matt Damon selected an independent script and filmed the making of the movie. An interesting show, not the greatest show in the world, but an interesting show. I think it lasted for a couple of seasons, but again, the one idea from the one conversation about it, that you can't fail privately. And so today we'll take a look at this one idea. What does it mean? Do we agree with it and how can we apply it? You can't fail privately.
Hunter Powers: Now I've shared this quote with a number of people over the years. It's been a number of years since Ben Affleck first said it and I first wrote it down, and it seems like most people, they don't get it or they don't get it at the same level that I get it. Which means that maybe even my interpretation of it is not the same as what it's supposed to be. Maybe I took it for something more than it actually is. So I'll note that as we go into this conversation, that perhaps the interpretation that I'm about to lay out does not line up exactly with how you would perceive the quote. And I welcome your feedback.
Hunter Powers: So there are two parts to the quote, I believe. First, "You can't fail." And then the last, "Privately." So we'll start with the first, start at the beginning. So what does it mean you can't fail? Well to fail would be to fall short of an expectation, to be unsuccessful in doing that which you set out to do. Perhaps there is both an implicit failure and an explicit failure and those two examples of a falling short of a goal or being unsuccessful in a goal is an example of explicit failure. And implicit failure, perhaps even the absence of a goal. To just be unsuccessful in life in general, a life can be a failure and it could be a failure because a goal was never set. There's also some notion of whether this is about you or this is about someone else, another person can be a failure. But that failure is still ultimately about falling short of an expectation.
Hunter Powers: So I guess the point is that the expectation can be one that the person owns or that another person owns and they don't even have to be aware of it. How much fun is that? You could actually, you might be failing someone right now and not even know it because they have an expectation. And you're falling short of it, but I think the majority of the time, what we think about as failure is our own failure. So if failure is to fall short of expectation and you can't, is to set up some way to prevent yourself from falling short. To prevent yourself from becoming unsuccessful. You can't fail. You can't fall short. You can't be unsuccessful. By the way, would seem to then suggest that you must be successful. You must not fall short. All right.
Hunter Powers: That's the first part and in the second part, "Privately." Well, it's the opposite of publicly. Perhaps it's a secret, but at a minimum it's limited to a group of people that you would often think of as a small of group of people. It's certainly a smaller body and probably the most common association with private would be to yourself, but maybe it's just your family or maybe it's a small group of friends. Something that is private is something that is often secret, that's something that you keep very close to you. It's something that's not intended to be shared widely. There's probably a suggestion of something of value when you apply the private label to it. Something you have no value on. You don't bother calling it private. You don't bother limiting it because it's of no value. You don't want ownership over it. You don't want control over it. That's another angle. I think private suggests a level of control or at a minimum, a level of desired control over something.
Hunter Powers: When we say something as private, we want a lot of control over it. That's one of the reasons why it's kept private because the implication is that if it wasn't private, our control would be far less, if not non-existent. And now to bring the two parts together, you can't fail privately. You can't be unsuccessful or you can't fall short if something is only for you or something that you keep complete control over. I don't know that that completely makes sense, but if we think of fail as missing the expectation or disappointing the trust of others. Which is a fair definition, then it starts to click a little more. If we said, you can't disappoint the expectation or trust of others when you never share anything with others, you can't fail privately. If to fail is to be unsuccessful, you can't be unsuccessful in a purely private context.
Hunter Powers: You have to go out into the public, you have to be interacting with other people, it has to be a broader proposition. And so from this literal interpretation, we can take it just a little bit farther into what I believe this quote means, which is that if you want to achieve something, there has to be something at risk. There's got to be something on the line. If nothing was ever at risk, then what exactly did you achieve? If it's free, if anyone can have it, if it's just there, then you never achieve anything. But in order to win, in order to not fail, you must achieve. And you can only do that in a public context. And so when you want to find that next level, when you want to break through the barrier and you're truly committed to it, you're going to have to do it publicly. Why? Because he can't fail privately. All right.
Hunter Powers: Hopefully you're still with me. So that was what does it mean, and now do we agree with it? You can't fail privately. You can fail privately. We can have our own goals, we can have goals that others would find irrational. We can have goals that are private and just for us and we can definitely fall short of them. And I think this is where most of the people that I've shared this idea with kind of lose it. They don't agree. They don't buy in because it requires a redefinition to some degree of failure. It suggests that with a private failure there was never really an expectation to begin with. And so I guess the question is, if we're looking for the strong counter to this idea, is there an example of great success privately? Can you be tremendously successful, truly breakthrough without anyone else knowing or having been involved? A completely private experience.
Hunter Powers: Success in general takes the form of bringing value to others. So certainly not in that context. You can't bring value to others privately. Maybe your identity is masked behind a corporation or some other entity, but it's still a very public act. I don't think that that's a thing. But you can have goals, right? You can say, well, I'm going to go to run a mile today and you can wake up in the morning and you can go run a mile. And that was a goal and you found success and you found success privately. You didn't need to broadcast it out and live stream, your panting as you crossed the finish line. But perhaps what this is getting at is I think that there's a qualification on the failure or the success and that's of the substance, of magnitude.
Hunter Powers: So if we said big after you can't fail, you can't fail big privately, then it starts to be easier to defend as an absolute truth. I was thinking of a counter example to that. Going to a dark place of what if someone killed themselves? Isn't that a giant failure and isn't that a private giant failure? They did it to themselves, but it's most likely not private because it most likely affects many, many other people. You failed and you failed big. It was not private. And it's interesting. The statement is also true if you replace fail with succeed. You can't succeed privately. It really is the exact same statement. And it's interesting that you can use the opposite word there. You can't fail privately, you can't succeed privately. For me, the fail version resonates far more, and I think it's because it suggests that at that scale you're not even really trying.
Hunter Powers: You've created a game where there's really no point of even playing, where the other version that you can succeed privately suggests that you shouldn't even bother playing the game. It suggests a level of impossible. Whereas you can't fail privately suggests you should turn up the volume, turn up the energy, turn up the stakes. If you're going to go for it, go for it. So going back to the question, do we agree with this statement? I think the answer is yes, with a qualification of scale. It is not a blanket statement. It requires something of substance, something of stature. But when you have that, it works. You can agree with it. You can't fail privately. So how do we use it? How do we take this idea? Why did I write it down the first time I heard it? Why have I told other people about it?
Hunter Powers: I think most people don't play big enough, myself included, by the way. We all have our comfort zones. We all like comfort and it's not easy to break free from them because on one level they're the goal, to reach a level of comfort, of self-satisfaction. But at the same time they're also a trap. I'm reminded of the sirens. In Homer's The Odyssey, these were these beautiful creatures that would lure the sailors, that were coming by singing songs and enchanting them and getting them away from their journey and ultimately trying to get them to crash their boats on some nearby rocks. And the trick to getting around them was learning to ignore them, which would then cause them to commit suicide. But the interesting thing is that the comforts or the sirens are also a sign of progress. But you can't stop there. In fact, you kind of have to ignore it. You've got to take yourself out of that comfort area and you can't let yourself become confined in that private sense.
Hunter Powers: If you want to achieve something, something of substance, something of scale, it's going to have to be in the public eye. It's going to have to be given a broad potential. There's going to have to be something at risk. No pain, no gain. An idea as old as time itself. Fun, fun fact. While that statement was popularized in the 80s by Jane Fonda in her exercise videos, one of the catchphrases. Its origins date back to the year 100 where in his book, and this is an English translation, The Ethics Of The Fathers Rabbi Ben Hei Hei said "According to the pain, is the gain." The pain is the gain. No gain without pain, no pain, no gain. You can't fail privately and maybe that's the angle. You can't fail privately is really an extension of no pain, no gain, but it's a little bit more directed.
Hunter Powers: You're looking for the gain. You're trying to figure out how do I break through? How do I figure out that next part? But I can't quite get it there. I don't know what to do. And the statement, you can't fail publicly suggests that you need to broaden the stage. You need to put a little bit more at risk. You need to involve a few more people and try something out. This is a little bit of an aside, but there's an idea in management that if you aren't a highly predictable commodity, you will probably be fired or promoted. And if you look around at people that you've seen be fired or be promoted and then ask yourself the question, were they a highly predictable commodity? Did they do exactly as everyone else did? Did they exist in a small private level or did they go broader? Did they become more public with what they were doing?
Hunter Powers: You will probably see that they were breaking out of the box, that they were in that private box. And so how we use this idea is by looking for a broader stage to play on. Looking to put ourselves further out there, to put more on the line, to put more at risk, to share our ideas wider, to really challenge ourselves to be vulnerable to a degree. Say, hey public, what what do you think of all of this? Because if you're only ever doing that privately, it's not worth a whole lot, is it? There isn't all that much strength to it. And why? Because "You can't fail privately," so said Ben Affleck. Someone who has found a lot of success and has probably also failed a time or two. And that is your one idea for today. I am Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, as we say in the city, DC Proper. And until next time.