If You Want to Be Successful Overnight, Lose a Lot First.
James Holzhauer’s rise to fame captivated Jeopardy! fans in the last two months. But perhaps even more exciting is how the 27-year-old librarian seemed to appear out of nowhere to defeat him . New Champion Emma Bootcher can teach us a lesson: If you want to be successful overnight, plan for the failure of the whole group first.
Of course, Betcher had a lot in her favor, and above all her profession (librarians are very smart and know a lot). Plus she went to Princeton. Oh, she wrote a damn master’s thesis on Jeopardy! questions. And yet … the first three times she auditioned for the show, she was not chosen. On the fourth try, she will be chosen to take on a guy who has won 32 games in a row and was * so close * to breaking Ken Jennings’ record for the highest winnings in the show’s history.
And yet she defeated him.
If you failed Jeopardy! audition, would you come back again and again ? I know I wouldn’t. (Although, to be honest, I wouldn’t be there at all; I’m terrible at the little things.)
But you see, Boetcher kept coming back – four times in about ten years – and that’s why her name became a household name and we didn’t. “When she wants something, she is very focused,” her father told The New York Times .
Failure sucks, but it’s a pretty important part of learning about pretty much everything we do. This is why we allow our children to make mistakes – we know they will learn from them, even if it means a few setbacks or tears of disappointment.
Whenever I think of the setbacks and the tenacity it takes to rise again and again, I think of Stephen King (you may have heard of him). In his book On Writing, he wrote that in his youth he received so many rejections that the nail with which he pierced them buckled under the weight of so much paper, and he had to replace it with a thorn. There are countless stories like this, from writers, athletes, and leaders of all professions, who have failed – until they did.
So, if you still haven’t succeeded again , take some inspiration from Emma Betcher, who has three wins now (you can watch her breakout episode, which aired on Monday andairs on YouTube all Friday).
Maybe you only have one day and one more try to be successful in no time.