| Happy Sunday, everyone. Someone asked me to write about failure, specifically a time I failed and what I did to overcome it. Well, I'll tell you about several failures. I can't just pick one. They've all been formative. There was the time I opened a frozen yogurt shop in Palo Alto, CA, made it thrive, and decided to expand into Santa Clara. The new shop failed miserably and I lost both stores. Huge failure. There was the time I spent my own money shooting dozens of episodes of a TV health talk show back in the early 2000s. The majority never aired and I pulled the plug on the rest. A million bucks down the drain. And there was the time I finally realized that my endurance athletic career was destroying my body, my family, and my will to live. It was a failure of epic proportions. You know what would have made those failures even worse, though? Not failing. Trying to hold on to those ventures as they slipped through my fingers.
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What if instead of throwing in the towel and shutting down the yogurt shop, I took out more loans to keep it afloat? Might not be here writing this today. What if instead of pulling the plug on the TV show I took on corporate sponsors and gave out health information I didn't truly stand by? The show could have survived but I'd have compromised my integrity. And, again, I probably wouldn't be writing this today. What if instead of admitting defeat and switching gears toward a more holistic, Primal way of eating and training, I doubled down on the triathlons and competed and trained 'til the wheels came off? I certainly wouldn't be here writing this today (the Primal Blueprint emerged out of my failure in endurance sports), and I might have two new hips to show for it. Failure is part of the game of life. It is unavoidable. And because life is an open-ended game of games that keeps going unless you make a terrible (fatal) mistake, you can simply start a new game with the information and experience you've gleaned from all the failures. There is no failure, only feedback. Art Devany said that once, and I stand by it. What failures have you experienced in life? What have you learned from them? How have you recovered? Let me know in the comment section of New and Noteworthy. | 
