Plan for failure

This week I’m talking with you about one of my most popular and longest-running To view this email as a web page, [click here]() [IWT Header] {NAME}, This week I’m talking with you about one of my most popular and longest-running courses, Success Triggers. This course is so old that the idea for it started when I was in high school — more than 20 years ago! It’s no secret that I went to a public high school — and there were quite a few smart people in my class. So naturally, around application time, most of my friends had their sights on at least one prestigious university. But to my surprise, something incredible happened. The first round of college admissions came in. Some people got in, but predictably, many others didn’t. Here’s the interesting part: Many of the people who didn’t get in changed their attitudes overnight, saying, “Whatever … I didn’t really want to go to that school anyway.” This really surprised me. Now, most of my friends had better grades than me. I’d already planned to get rejected from my dream school (Stanford) anyway, so I took a slightly different approach to the application process... Since I had already assumed that I was going to get rejected, I’d already made plans for what I’d do to get in, despite their rejection. I was going to send them recent updates to my coursework, a few recent press clippings I’d done, and some updates on the business/job I was doing in high school. In short, getting a “no” was only the first step. I called this mental framework “Failure Expectation.” Rather than discouraging me, planning to fail actually INCREASED my confidence tenfold because I knew that if I played out all the contingencies, it was only a matter of time before I got what I wanted. My success wasn’t dependent on luck. I was in control. “Failure Expectation” was a huge, counterintuitive insight for me, and it ended up becoming one of my earliest Success Triggers. As a result, I got into Stanford, and I learned a very valuable lesson: We gain confidence in our abilities not from a SINGLE successful attempt, but from planning ahead of time and executing that plan until we reach our objective. Think of all the things you’ve tried and failed at after a SINGLE attempt. You give yourself so many reasons why it just won’t work: - “It’s not for me” - “I’m too busy” - “It’s too hard” But the reality is simple: When we try something one time and it doesn’t work, we silently retreat. We lose confidence in our abilities and never try again. How many times have you contented yourself with something you knew would be easy because you were too AFRAID to try something new and challenging? What type of amazing, world-changing work would you be doing if you had the mental frameworks to push past your fears and doubts to build rock-solid, unshakable confidence in your abilities? Most of us wouldn’t even recognize ourselves if we could truly realize our potential. What I did was twofold: (1) I built a system, planning for failure … and (2) the confidence I got allowed me to write an even better application. Do you see how you can apply this to your life? The confidence I had — along with a lot of luck that I partially created — let me control my own destiny. That’s the true value of Success Triggers — tiny mental shifts that add up to an absolutely enormous effect over time. Imagine if you had these Success Triggers in your pocket for the rest of your life. Whenever you were faced with a tough choice, you’d have a set of “mental frameworks” to rely on. Result: Massive confidence. Mental clarity. And trusting in yourself. “How to Never Be Afraid of Failure” is just one of the 30 Success Triggers I cover in the course. [Click here]() to learn about the other 29. [Signature] P.S. In this email, I showed you one of my 30 Success Triggers. But I want to give you a gift to celebrate eight years of the course. Here’s [one of the videos]() from the Success Triggers course. (Note: I joke about the three Ramit’s: “Awkward and Shy Ramit,” “Coming-of-age Ramit,” and “CEO Ramit.” This video comes squarely from the Coming-of-age Ramit time period.)   [Logo] [insta]() [Twitter]() [twitter]() [youtube]() [Linkedin]() [podcast]() This email was sent to [{EMAIL} .]() If you no longer wish to receive these emails you may [unsubscribe]( at any time. I Will Teach You To Be Rich 548 Market St #89946 San Francisco, CA 94104-5401