What Failure Does to Your Cognition—and Your Strategy

0:28This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome.

0:49So there's another business trope. We constantly tell ourselves to celebrate failure. That if you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough, and then you need to learn from it, but you need to let go and move on. Does that idea, you know, run from failure, but let go of it and move on, does that resonate with your research? This past summer, I actually served as Chris Hemsworth's brain coach on the show Limitless with Chris Hemsworth. And it was all about exploring neuroplasticity and how we can insulate our brains from some of the negative effects of aging. And one of the biggest lessons to come from that TV series is the importance of challenging yourself enough that you do fail.

1:30And that's because it's only when we fail that we send a signal to our brains that this current system's not working, that the brain needs to rewire itself in order to achieve the task. And that's how you tap into the brain's capacity for neuroplasticity and how you keep strengthening it and boosting it over time. And so when we fail at something, our brains release this really powerful cocktail of neurochemicals that really help drive growth and learning. And so I think, you know, it might be more of a metaphor in the organizational context, but I absolutely believe that when a company fails, think about all the lessons they're learning, all the mistakes they won't repeat, and also the fact that they tried something hard, right?

2:13We often don't fail at easy stuff. And so it can be an indicator that a company was really pushing the limits and testing out something very ambitious.

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