Des Linden: Failure is an Action, Not an Identity

Photo by takahiro taguchi on Unsplash

I just listened to The Rich Roll Podcast with Boston Marathon champion Des
Linden and re-listened to
parts of it a few times because I loved it so much. If you don’t know who Des
Linden is, she became the first American woman to win the Boston Marathon in 33
years on April 16, 2018. But what you may not know is that in 2011, she came in
second in heartbreaking fashion, getting passed by Kenya’s Caroline Kilel with
200 meters to go and losing by TWO
seconds.
It took her SEVEN years to finally come back and win the Boston Marathon. And
then there’s how she did it: she overcame 25-mph headwinds and freezing
rain.
She twice went off her race plan to wait for teammate Shalane Flanagan to use
the restroom and help her catch back up with the pack, and then later tried to
help teammate Molly Huddle catch back up to the lead pack.

I love Des’ attitude about the race, towards training, towards life and on
overcoming failure. Highly recommend listening to the episode, but I wanted the
share her thoughts in particular on failure (emphasis mine):

Last year (2017) was the big thing where “I’m trying to win the Boston
Marathon”. I put it out there very publicly. Afterwards, it didn’t happen, and I
said I failed and that’s okay. People were like “No, you didn’t fail! You were
amazing! And this and that.” But I wanted to do this thing and I failed to do
it. I failed. Failure is an action, it’s not an identity. We do it all the
time. And if you learn from it, you get better and that’s how you grow. Being
super afraid of failure, you kind of miss the point. Those are the lessons.
That’s where you learn the most. You fail your way to success.

There’s a few things to unpack here:

1. You have to set ambitious goals and not be afraid to put them out there, albeit
   it’s up to you how publicly you want to do that. But if you’re afraid of falling
   short and constantly focused on not wanting to fail, you won’t set real goals
   towards achieving your potential.
2. Part of goal-setting is that it’s really an arbitrary point in time to measure
   your progress — whether that’s a goal marathon time, a weight loss goal, a
   weight-lifting goal, or learning a new skill. A good goal should be measurable —
   you should be able to clearly and objectively say whether or not you succeeded
   or failed at that point in time. Nothing wishy washy. You either win the Boston
   Marathon or you don’t. You either lose 5 pounds by next month or you don’t.
3. If you don’t, admit failure. If you’re uncomfortable with failure like I am and
   like most people are, one tool that a lot of runners use is to set multiple
   goals: A goals, B goals, and C
   goals.
   That way, you kind of have stepping stones for yourself. And even if you don’t
   succeed, you should be proud of your effort, but do admit failure. If you
   constantly succeed at all three goals, you probably aren’t setting your A goals
   high enough. You should fail with regularity. And when you do, admit it to
   yourself. And use it to drive you and make you better.
4. That said, failing often sucks. It shakes your confidence, but it’s not part of
   your identity. I think this is where learning to love and enjoy the process of
   learning or training or getting better is crucial. Even someone like Des Linden
   has days where she doesn’t want to get out the door for a run. You can listen to
   the episode to hear more about how or why she does anyway.

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Originally published at www.davidtran.me on June 25, 2018.