Just respawn and try again

In games

In games, death is completely normal.

Boss fight failed, fell off a cliff, got swarmed by mobs. Every player has died countless times.

But no one quits the game because of it. Why?

Because death is part of the game. Each death teaches you something:

First death: Learn the monster’s attack range.
Second death: Discover trap locations.
Third death: Find better positioning.
Tenth death: Finally beat it.

Death isn’t punishment, it’s teaching.

Imagine a game where you can never die—no challenge, no sense of achievement, boring as hell.

It’s because you can die that beating it means something. It’s because you’ve died many times that you get stronger.

Game designers intentionally let you die. They know that without dying dozens of times, you won’t learn.

In reality

In reality, we take failure way too seriously.

Submission rejected = game over.
Interview failed = too scared to try again.
Confession rejected = no hope in this lifetime.

We’d rather not play than see the failure screen.

But you know what? Edison tried thousands of materials before finding the right filament. Every theorem, every formula you read in textbooks is the result of countless trials and errors. Successful entrepreneurs have typically gone through multiple failures and explorations.

Masters aren’t people who never fail. Masters are the people who’ve failed the most.

Scientific progress is constant trial and error—hypothesis, experiment, failure, revision, re-experiment. There’s no truth that comes in one shot.

Kids learning to walk fall an average of 2,000 times. Learning language, they make mistakes hundreds of times. They don’t care about failing, so they learn fast. Adults care too much, so they learn slowly.

Don’t treat failure as an ending. Treat failure as data.

Each failure gives us feedback: this path doesn’t work, try a different one.

Just respawn and try again.

Player notes

We worship success too much, but can’t see the failures behind it. Media loves reporting overnight success, movies love genius stories, no one wants to watch ordinary people fail a thousand times.

But the truth is: successful people have also failed the most.

Basketball god Michael Jordan had a commercial I still remember. 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 again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

When my son Nolan was learning English at age two, he spent all day making alien sounds, singing incomprehensible songs, completely shameless. A month or two later, he could have simple conversations.

It’s not that he was smart, he just wasn’t afraid to be wrong.

As adults, we become too afraid of failure. Afraid of embarrassment, afraid of being laughed at, afraid of proving we can’t do it. But actually, most failures don’t matter to anyone except yourself.

One of my favorite games is Celeste, a super difficult platformer. One wrong button press and you restart. I died several thousand times before beating it.

Several thousand times.

But each retry, my fingers got a bit more precise. From clumsy to smooth, from tense to relaxed. When I finally beat it, the controls flowed like water. It felt amazing.

In games, I can calmly die several thousand times. In reality, I don’t even dare to fail once.

If I could approach reality like I approach games and not fear failure, how powerful would I be?

Even if I fail thousands of times, so what?

Games taught me: failure isn’t shameful, not daring to fail is shameful.

Now, I want to live like I play games—die a few more times to get stronger.

Leveling tips

□ Track failure count like in games—which attempt is this?
□ After each failure ask: “What did I learn?” not “Why am I so bad?”
□ Set a “failure quota”: try at least 5 things that might fail this month
□ Must retry within 24 hours after failure, while the memory is fresh
□ Treat failure as experience points too—the more you fail, the higher your level