Why Failure Is the Fastest Path to Growth

0:0010 years ago, I made the decision to build my personal brand that was elevated, yet approachable, and reflected who I was, not just what I did. I created my website with ShowIt because it's true drag-and-drop freedom, so you can easily build and update your site. Plus, their real human support team, game changer. Want to try it for yourself? Head to jasminestar.com forward slash ShowIt for a 14-day free trial and first month free when you subscribe. Hey friend, welcome to this special shorty episode of The Jasmine Star Show, a mini high-impact segment we pulled from one of Jasmine's favorite interviews that deserves its own spotlight.

0:34In this episode, you'll hear Jasmine on the Sharon Says So podcast with the incredible Sharon McMahon. And let me tell you, it's a conversation that will leave you feeling like you can conquer anything, even if you don't feel ready. They talk about how you can still pursue your dreams, even if you're feeling unqualified, underfunded, or not the smartest in the room. Jasmine also opens up about the role failure plays in success, why constantly being the smartest one in the room might be holding you back, and how she navigates the highs and lows of social media while staying grounded. If you've ever felt like your past disqualifies you from your future, this one's for you.

1:09Let's listen in. Until you have done it consistently, you are never going to develop the confidence to step up and actually shoot the ball. I'm speaking as though I have any kind of knowledge or authority related to sports, of which I have none. I'm pretty sure I have an iron lung. I have two left feet and iron lung. I was always the last kid who was picked for any sport activity, unless the sport activity was like high impact reading. If that was the case, I'd be like team captain. I was like, I want to finish like war and peace in a day. That's right. It also does not help that I am six feet tall.

1:42And so people assume I'm naturally athletic, which I'm not. And also I'm not actually that interested in sports. So it creates this weird thing in people's minds where it's like, but how? The only thing you're supposed to be good at is being athletic. Why don't you play basketball? How about volleyball? Lucky me, nobody's looking at like a short brown girl and being like her, she's the Olympian. So I know like apologies to you. I also love what you have to say about it doesn't really matter if the glass is half full or half empty. That is not the point. The point is that the glass is refillable.

2:16Say more about that. Well, we spend so much time contextualizing our life and what we have versus what we want, or what we have or what we don't have. And we look at it as it's in a status stasis when it's actually quite the opposite. If there is something in your cup, it is proof. However little, let's not even talk that the cup is even half full. Let's say the cup is one 16th full. The fact that there is something in the cup is proof that it is refillable, that whatever it is that you are looking for, it can be refilled. But if you're only ever focusing on what you don't have, it will never be enough.

2:49So the question isn't, why is my cup not full? the question should be, how can I fill my cup? And I know it sounds like super esoteric and like a little amoeba-like, but truly the reality of the situation doesn't change, but our approach and viewpoint of the situation does. And it ends up attracting the very thing that we want. I love the idea too, that your perspective on a situation in your life, some hardship you're going through, some business hurdle you're trying to attack, that your perspective is really what needs to shift. And the perspective of, it's not about how much room there is in the glass.

3:27When you shift your perspective about the glass itself, that is when things change for you. A thousand times over. And I read a book by Dr. Carol Dweck, and it's entitled Mindset. And in it, she describes that there's two types of mindset. There is a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. And people are naturally born with one and you can change it. And as I was reading to the book, I am a clear, I mean, I am a 100%. I was born a fixed mindset. One is not better or worse than the other, but it's the cognizance that I was looking at things in terms of wins and failures. And I was looking in terms of hierarchies and I would walk into a room and I would immediately assess, oh, no, no, no, I can't speak because I am not.

4:13The entirety of the book was shifting about how we look at things. Like instead of looking at things as wins and losses, you're looking at as learnings and opportunities. Instead of looking at obstacles, you're looking at as opportunities. And we were looking at things not necessarily in your estimation of value, but what you can learn or share. It shifts the way that you approach things. And I am telling you, I had like a brainwashing. It was as if my brain was being washed from years of just junk I was filling with it. And I did just started doing like a lot of work around what the mind does and how it's a muscle.

4:46And the same way that you build out a muscle, say in your arm, you could work on your brain and started reading a lot from Dr. Amen. And one thing that I had read that he wrote was like the average person thinks 60 ,000 thoughts a day and 98 % of them are negative. Oh my gosh. And these aren't necessarily like, you're dumb, you're behind. These are things of, it will never be enough if I just could, or you woke up five minutes late. You're two points short, whatever the case may be. And I started thinking to myself is just being awareness around of how I was speaking to myself and looking at situations.

5:19And I am telling you, Sharon, things radically changed. The situation was the same, but when I shifted how I viewed the situation, I was able to rebound faster. I was able to give myself a ton of grace. And all of a sudden by proxy of giving myself a ton of grace, I was able to iterate and grow. I was able to attract the things that I kept on keeping away because I thought it wasn't at the right time because I wasn't qualified and I was the person who not only held what qualification looked like, but deemed it appropriate for me to be qualified. What a messed up situation to live in. So becoming aware of the same situation and then looking at it differently became a game changer.

5:53I also love one of the things you said on your account, which is that perfection is just procrastination in disguise. I love that idea too, because once Once you start shifting how you view your perfectionistic tendencies, it changes your behavior. Absolutely. And furthermore, what happens is we use like, well, I need to get my website perfect, or I need to get my idea perfect, or I need to dress my kids perfectly, whatever the case may be is. We want to do that and give ourselves essentially a buffer to not having to do it because it's only when it's perfect. But the idea of perfection is an illusion because perfection is subjective.

6:32What you think is perfect, I could look at and be like, I think it's mediocre. And what I think is perfect, you might look at it and be like, that's so not perfect. So if we then know that perfection is just an idea and entirely subjective, we're just basically giving ourselves an easy way out from doing the thing that we know we should be doing. So if we were to contextualize this in terms of putting out a piece of content or social media or writing a poem or writing your book, there have been times in our lives wherever you would put something out and you poured your heart and soul into it. You're like, this is so amazing.

7:00This is my thing. This is my manifesto. And you put it out there and there's like, it falls flat. Nobody responds in the way that you had expected. And then counter opposite that, you could just put something out and you're like, it is what it is. And then all of a sudden there's massive outpouring of support or opinions or it being shared. And you're like, wait, what? So if that has ever happened to anybody, it's just proof that perfection doesn't exist. It just has to be perfect for the intended person who needs it at that very moment. So instead of stopping ourselves from putting something out for fear of not being perfect, We should just say, I need to put it out and let the audience tell me what I should do better the next time or do more of in the future.

7:35Sometimes we use perfectionism, and I know that I have certainly done this in the past. You've used perfectionism as a crutch to avoid actually doing something out of fear of failure of doing the thing. Has that ever happened to you? Oh, I mean, so often. The big shift for me professionally, personally, was about three or four years ago where I've just decided, burn the ships. What got you to the island, don't give yourself a way to go back. And the minute you just start burning the ships, aka burned my tower of crutches, I'm just like, how many mistakes can we make? How as fast as we can do this?

8:11And actually, I mean, let's just be completely honest is there are people who believe such the opposite of that. Now our team has grown and people see it differently. And I am very, I mean, of course there's going to be like headbutting in a way because I'm like, put it out. Let the market fix it. And like, well, no, we need to have like focus groups. We need to go through testing and we need to do the AB. And I get that. And I see that and I appreciate it. But I am just so like, how quickly can we make mistakes? The market will fix anything we put out so much faster than us sitting and pontificating or hypothesizing based on us having a focus group of eight versus what we need to do to serve a business of 80 ,000.

8:47You know, just differences there, but I am a burn the ships, burn the tower of crutches. Let's make mistakes as quickly as possible because this is how we grow and this is how we learn. I saw one billionaire, I forget which one it was, where he was like, they asked him, what is the secret to success? And his advice was fail faster, get started quicker, make the mistakes more quickly so that you then learn what the mistakes are and stop doing those mistakes. Sitting at home being like, well, which one is the mistake? I'm not sure. I don't know. I'm gonna have to think about that some more. And like that actually is not useful.

9:21Not at all. But I also think one of the ancillary benefits of it is that your actions give other people permission to follow suit. But secondly, the thing that I really want to bend into is oftentimes I'm coaching business owners on how to change and iterate and things of nature. So at the time of this recording, working on a project and I could put out the project and let the market fix it, but it's too close of a project for me. So I decided to beta test it. And I'm reaching out to a small group of people. This morning at 4.30 in the morning, I wrote down, this is not great. It's broken. And I think together we can make it better.

9:56So are you going to join this adventure and opportunity? Now, not everybody's going to see this. A small group of people are going to do this and they're going to decide to go on this with us. But I actually love the fact that I could stand up and say, this is me making a lot of mistakes. And I want to give you a front row seat to it so that you are empowered to go and do the same with your audience or in your business. I kind of feel like it's freeing. Like, let me just tell you, it's not going to be great. Let me under promise and over deliver, but be really forthcoming about that. Because you say too, that failure is just a lesson.

10:22Yes. Who was it? I think it's Marie Forleo who said something to the effect of, I never lose. I either win or I learn. Oh yes. Failure is just a lesson and it's super useful information actually. A hundred percent. And you know, like oftentimes when you take these micro quote unquote losses, and if you want to like truly call them micro lessons. It's if not now, and if not tomorrow, then very, very soon on the back of a bunch of lessons, you will know precisely what you should be doing in the future. From my experience, I will tell you, I actually don't think that people are afraid of making mistakes or having failures.

11:00What they're more afraid of are what people around them are going to say about their mistakes and failures. And this is what I see. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait. So we're really concerned about people's opinions when people's opinions don't pay our bills. and we're really concerned about people's opinions when we know they're going to have an opinion anyway. You decide to sit on the couch or go on a run, they have an opinion. You decide to make a healthy meal or have a double cheeseburger, they have an opinion. You decide to homeschool your children or send them to public school, they have an opinion.

11:26So if you know everybody's going to have an opinion no matter what it is you do, why not do the very thing you want to do? If we know they're going to talk, give them something good to talk about and have them say their name right. That conversation is your reminder that you don't need to have it all figured out to start making moves. You don't need the perfect credentials, a fancy background, or a massive budget. You just need belief, grit, and a willingness to take the next best step. If this episode lit a fire in you, do us a favor and share it with someone who needs to hear it too. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode.