What If You're Not Actually Failing?

Christian Taylor 00:00
This is Documentary First: The Deep Dive, where I take an insight from a recent main Documentary First podcast conversation, plumb its depths, and see what gold we can bring to the surface. I'm Christian Taylor. Let's dive in. So today, I want to talk about failure, not the inspirational poster versions, the real thing, the kind that makes you question whether you should keep going. Now, this comes from my conversation recently with filmmaker Quinnolyn Benson-Yates about her documentary Epic Bill. Quinn spent seven years making a film about an endurance athlete, Bill, who lost everything, his video rental empire, his marriage, his identity as a successful businessman, and he rebuilt himself one grueling race at a time. And something he said made me stop and think. He said, "Courage is a muscle."

Christian Taylor 00:52
Now, I want to unpack that because I think it might be the most important thing we can understand as filmmakers, as creators, just as simple human beings trying to do something that matters. Let me start with a story from my own life. Years ago, when I was playing competitive tennis, I read a really great book called Vic Braden's Mental Tennis, and it completely changed my game. Not because it taught me a better backhand, because it certainly did not, but it taught me how to think about losing. Now, I hated losing. I mean, I really, really hated it. When I missed a shot, I would crucify myself. I would call myself terrible names. I would spiral into this pit of self-loathing that made me miss the next point, and it made it even harder to win. And Vic said something so simple it almost sounded really stupid. I mean, if you sat a second you would it would seem really obvious. You could nearly lose half the points in a match and still win. You just needed to win one more point than your opponent. That's it. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to win every single point. You just have to win enough. And it unlocked something in me. The fear of failure started to release its grip. I stopped putting so much pressure on myself to be perfect and started playing better. Not because I was hitting differently, but because I was thinking differently.

Christian Taylor 02:16
I didn't know it at the time, but that was my first lesson in an idea that Bill talked about, courage being a muscle. I was learning to keep going after a lost point, not to let one failure define a whole match. So, let's talk about Bill. Bill Bradley, the subject of Quinn's documentary Epic Bill, was a multi-millionaire. He built a video rental empire from scratch, started with 15 credit cards and sheer determination. He was a community leader. He had everything. And then Netflix happened. The industry didn't just decline, it totally collapsed. Bill kept opening new stores though even as profits fell because he believed so deeply in what he had built and he went bankrupt. He went through a divorce. His identity as a successful businessman was erased in a very public, very painful way. But here's what gets really interesting.

Christian Taylor 03:15
Bill then didn't try to rebuild himself as a businessman. Instead, he started running. Literally, he ran a 50-mile ultramarathon on a whim. And something clicked. He started doing extreme endurance events, 130-mile races through Death Valley, Arctic ultras in -50° weather, climbs up 22,000-foot mountains. He developed two phrases that became his mantras. One was, "Show up and suffer." And the other, as I referenced earlier, was courage is a muscle. Now, show up and suffer means exactly what it sounds like. Do the work. It won't be easy. Nobody said it would be, but you show up anyway. And courage is a muscle means you have to keep working it. You can't build courage by avoiding hard things. You build it by doing hard things over and over, even when you fail.

Christian Taylor 04:12
Especially when you fail. Now, here's what's fascinating. As I started thinking about it, I realized Bill's metaphor is actually backed by science. I mean, you may have heard this before. When you lift weights or do any sort of intense exercise, you create microscopic tears in your muscle fibers. Your body responds by sending nutrients and blood to repair that damage. And when the repair is complete, the muscle comes back stronger than before. As one doctor put it, you have to break the muscle down to build it back up stronger. But here's the key.

Christian Taylor 04:49
The growth doesn't happen during the stress. It happens during the recovery after the stress. You need to rest. You need nutrition. You need the time. And what happens if you overdo it? You tear your muscles faster. And then your body can't repair them. You don't get stronger, then you get injured. So Quinn calls this concept failing sustainably. What might that look like? Well, it could look like having mentors who believe in you, a good community.

Christian Taylor 05:27
You do need to push yourself, yeah, but not past the point of destruction. While courage works the same way, each difficult thing we face tears at us a little. But if we allow recovery, rest, reflection faith we can come back stronger. The muscle of courage does grow, but only if we keep using it. Now, I love examples. I love metaphors. So I was thinking about, you know, some that meant a lot to me. And I'm going to give you a couple of people who like understood this better than I. Now, I wish I could take credit for this. I wish I could say that I was a deep well of American historical knowledge. But, you know, I got to be real. I have to give credit for this next little gem I'm going to tell you about to the writers of my one of my favorite movies, National Treasure, for this little piece of knowledge and Nicolas Cage for delivering the line so masterfully. The line goes like this.

Christian Taylor 06:31
You know, Thomas Edison tried and failed nearly 2,000 times to develop the carbonized cotton thread filament for the incandescent light bulb. And when asked about it, he said, "I didn't fail. I found out 2,000 ways how not to make a light bulb." But he only needed to find one to make it work. He didn't see those attempts as failures, obviously. He saw them as data. Each one taught him something. Each one got him closer to the answer. He later said, "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

Christian Taylor 07:15
Then there's Michael Jordan, a arguably one of the greatest basketball players of all time. And there was this famous Nike commercial in which he said, "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over in my life. And that's why I succeed. Not in spite of my failures, but because of my failures." Now that's reframing.

Christian Taylor 07:53
Jordan also said something else I love. I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying. Word. I want to tell you another story. This one is appropriate because right now we're right in the middle of the Winter Olympics. Okay, so last week I watched the Netflix documentary Miracle: The Boys of '80. And if you haven't seen it, highly recommend it. It's about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team. And it's the perfect illustration of everything that we're talking about right now. So, the Soviet hockey team had won four consecutive Olympic gold medals. Now, they hadn't lost an Olympic game in 12 years. I mean, these guys were huge. They were monsters. They were incredible. The goal differential that they had since 1960 was 175 to 44. They were professionals in everything but name. The government literally paid them to do nothing but train. The US team, they were college kids. Average age of them was 21, the youngest team in US history, US Olympic history. 13 days before they would face each other in the US Olympics, the Soviets crushed the Americans 10 to 3 at an exhibition game in Madison Square Garden. 10 to 3.

Christian Taylor 09:10
After that loss, coach Herb Brooks said, "Our chances for a gold medal are very slim, if none at all." Now, that could have been the end of the story. a bunch of college kids, college kids got, you know, a reality check about how far they were from the best team in the world and nobody would have blamed them for it. I mean, goodness, they probably would have understood if they didn't win any medals at all. But they didn't quit. They scrapped through the opening round, including, you know, needing a last second goal just to tie the Swedish. And then they kept showing up. And it wasn't easy.

Christian Taylor 09:52
They got injured a lot, but they kept playing. They kept suffering. And on February 22nd, 1980, and I was watching it in real life, yes, I am that old. They beat the Soviets four to three. Two days later, they beat Finland to win the gold. I mean, it was crazy. It was like that game was the gold medal round, but they still had one more. And Al Michaels asked the question, you know, that gives me chills. Do you believe in miracles? Yes, if you haven't watched it, you totally should. Sports Illustrated named it the top sports moment of the 20th century.

Christian Taylor 10:29
But here's what I want you to remember. It doesn't happen without the 10-3 loss. That failure was part of the story. That crushing defeat was the setup for the miracle. And this isn't just sports psychology. This is ancient wisdom, actually. And I can prove it. Marcus Aurelius, the stoic philosopher, one of my favorite, and he was a Roman emperor as well. He wrote the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. Now, Ryan Holiday turned this into a book called The Obstacle is the Way. If you haven't read it, totally suggest it. The idea is simple. Every obstacle, every failure, every setback is an opportunity. Not in some toxic positivity way, but practically it's a chance to practice patience or resilience or creativity. It's data.

Christian Taylor 11:21
Like Edison said, the Stoics practice what they called negative visualization, imagining what could go wrong. Not to be pessimistic, but so that they wouldn't be surprised by failure. So they could respond to it instead of being destroyed by it. And incidentally, James, a contemporary of the Stoics and one of the writers of the book of James in the Bible, said something similar. Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. Because you know, the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Christian Taylor 11:58
Romans 8:28, Paul wrote this book. He said, "All things work together for good." Now, not all things are good, but all things, even the failures, even the crushing defeats can be woven into something good. The Stoics and Scripture and Epic Bill, they, you know, all agree trials aren't obstacles to becoming who we're meant to be. They're part of the process of becoming who we're meant to be.

Christian Taylor 12:36
Which brings me to my confession. I got to be honest with you. I'm not telling you this from some mountaintop of success. I'm actually telling you this from the valley. I'm speaking to myself almost as much, if not more, than to you. I've been questioning my own identity as a filmmaker, as a podcast host, as a business owner, my own success. I've been feeling like a failure myself in ways that are hard to admit out loud. My business requires me to subsidize it at times just to pay the overhead. My Patreon only has 25 paying members, most at the lowest levels. My film, which I poured years of my life into, still has licensing fees and lawyer fees and marketing fees that I have to pay and requires me to promote it constantly for years after its release.

Christian Taylor 13:34
Some days, I wonder if any of this is working. And some days, a lot of days, I wonder if I should just quit. And yet, when I look at it through a different lens, like the ones I've been talking about, see what I did there? I start to see something else. I haven't been failing. I've been finding ways that didn't work. Each step has been getting me closer to what I need to be doing. I'm getting data like Edison. I'm working the muscle like Bill. I'm in my own 10-3 loss and I don't know yet what miracle might be on the other side.

Christian Taylor 14:13
Quinn said something in our interview that stuck with me. She said, "Valuing the courage to try again is a radical concept. It's something that keeps you walking forward in life." So that's what I'm choosing. To keep walking forward, to keep showing up, to keep suffering in the productive sense, doing the hard work even when it's not paying off yet. Because here's what I realize. Failure really isn't the most important thing. How we respond to the failure is.

Christian Taylor 14:49
So, if you're in it right now, if you're questioning whether to keep going, whether you have what it takes, whether any of this is going to work, I want you to hear this with me. Courage is a muscle. You've got to work it to grow it. Show up and suffer. Do the hard thing anyway. Do the work. And whatever obstacle is in front of you is your way. It's the way. What stands in front of you, what stands on your path might actually be what you need. And failure, it might just be the gift you didn't know you were being given.

Christian Taylor 15:26
Keep going. That's it for this episode of Documentary First: The Deep Dive. If you want to hear my full conversation with Quinnolyn Benson-Yates about Epic Bill distribution and the seven-year journey of making our first feature documentary, check out episode 272 of the main Documentary First podcast. And if this episode resonated with you, if you're in your own valley right now or if you've climbed out of one, I'd love to hear about it. Drop me a message and I might just feature some of your responses in a future episode. Until next time, please keep telling stories that matter.

Christian Taylor 16:05
I'm Christian Taylor. Thanks for diving in with me. Hey everybody, thanks for spending a few minutes with me on The Deep Dive. If you like this, subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And check out the full Documentary First podcast for longer conversations with the filmmakers behind the docs you love. You can find both shows wherever you listen to podcast. And if you want to support what we're doing, visit documentaryfirst.com. We'll see you next time.