24:01Em on the brain ! · Talking Head
The Neuroscience-Backed Morning Routine to Rewire Your Brain
A neuroscientist breaks her morning down into three moves — movement, mindfulness, mindset — and explains the biology behind each one.
July 6thThe argument in one line.
The brain only updates its model when it gets something wrong, so avoiding failure doesn't protect success, it blocks the exact prediction-error signal the brain needs to learn and improve.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You avoid a goal, a pitch, or a hard conversation because you can't stand the thought of failing at it, especially publicly.
- You've been leaning on what already worked for so long that the work feels stale or joyless.
- You want a concrete system for taking more attempts, not just a one-time pep talk about mindset.
SKIP IF…
- You're looking for tactical business, marketing, or content strategy; this is entirely about the psychology of taking action, not the strategy itself.
The full version, fast.
The brain learns through prediction error: it only updates its model when an attempt turns out wrong, so avoiding failure blocks the exact signal that produces growth. Every time fear of failure stops someone from acting, the relief they feel reinforces avoidance the same way a treat reinforces a trained behavior, training the brain to keep avoiding. The video lays out four tools to reverse this: treat failure as data instead of identity, stop hiding failures from others, deliberately reward the attempt rather than only the win, and set an explicit failure quota, a fixed number of attempts required before any reward, which guarantees more tries and, along the way, more wins.
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00:00 – 00:46
01 · Cold open: the backward claim
States the core counterintuitive claim, that increasing your failure rate is what raises your success rate, and frames avoiding failure as a form of self-sabotage.
00:46 – 01:19
02 · Who's talking
Self-introduction: a neuroscientist with two degrees and lab research experience, now coaching people in over 55 countries.
01:19 – 02:16
03 · Prediction error
Explains that the brain learns by noticing when it was wrong, prediction error, and that the only way to generate that signal is to actually attempt something and risk being wrong.
02:16 – 03:11
04 · The investor's question
A grad-school story: a Silicon Valley tech founder told her investors specifically look for founders who have already tried and failed at a business, reframing failure as proof of experience.
03:11 – 05:35
05 · The avoidance-reward loop
Uses dog training to explain positive vs. negative reinforcement, then argues that avoiding a feared action removes anxiety in the moment, which reinforces avoidance and trains the brain to keep avoiding.
05:35 – 06:12
06 · Not trying is the only real failure
Argues that avoiding failure by not playing the game at all isn't actually avoiding failure, since taking a shot and missing still counts as showing up and learning.
06:12 – 07:46
07 · Exploitation vs. exploration
Fear of failure pushes people into exploitation, repeating what's already worked, instead of exploration, the play and experimentation creativity requires; she admits falling into this trap and feeling her own work go stale.
07:46 – 08:13
08 · Transition to the four tools
Pivots from the neuroscience explanation into four practical tools for retraining the brain to seek failure.
08:13 – 11:18
09 · Tool 1: stop making failure about your identity
Reframes failure as data rather than a verdict on who you are, contrasts how optimists isolate a setback versus how pessimists generalize it, and recommends swapping 'I'm a failure' for 'not good enough yet.'
11:18 – 13:57
10 · Tool 2: stop hiding your failures
Shares failures openly inside her own coaching community to remove shame, warns against publicly judging other people's failures, and describes deliberately posting content built to flop after hitting a million Instagram followers, to prove to her own brain that failing was survivable.
13:57 – 17:54
11 · Tool 3: reward failing
Argues wins are already inherently rewarding, so the missing piece is deliberately rewarding the attempt itself, since the outcome isn't fully controllable but the effort is, and shares a personal moment of applying this in a new area of her life.
17:54 – 20:33
12 · Tool 4: create a failure quota
Introduces the failure quota, committing to a set number of attempts (like 10) before allowing a reward, which guarantees more tries, more eventual wins, and practice at detaching from any single outcome.
20:33 – 21:38
13 · CTA and sign-off
Closes by pointing to a free live masterclass on the neuroscience of manifestation and the subconscious mind, linked in the description.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The brain learns through prediction error, so the only way to trigger that update is to actually make an attempt and risk being wrong.
- Investors look for founders who have already tried and failed at a business, because a past failure is proof of real experience, not a red flag.
- Avoiding a feared action removes the anxiety of that moment, and the brain reads that relief as a reward for avoiding, which trains it to keep avoiding.
- The only way to truly fail in life is to not try at all; taking a shot and missing still counts as showing up and learning.
- Fear of failure pushes the brain into exploitation, repeating what's already worked, instead of exploration, the mode where creativity and new ideas actually come from.
- Optimists treat a setback as one isolated data point; pessimists generalize it into a verdict on everything, and that framing difference is trainable.
- Swapping 'I'm a failure' for 'I'm not good enough at this yet' turns a fixed identity claim into a skill that's still being built.
- Sharing failures openly inside a supportive group removes the shame that keeps most people hiding them in the first place.
- Judging other people's public failures trains your own brain to expect the same judgment back, which reinforces your own avoidance.
- Deliberately posting content built to flop is a way of proving to your own brain that failure is survivable, even with a large audience watching.
- Reward the attempt, not just the win, because the outcome isn't fully controllable but making the effort always is.
- Setting an explicit failure quota, for example ten attempts before a reward, guarantees more tries, and more tries statistically produce more wins along the way.
Reward the attempt, not the outcome.
TRAIN FOR FAILURE
The brain only learns by being wrong, so treating failure as neutral data instead of identity-damaging evidence, and rewarding the attempt instead of only the win, is what actually builds the willingness to keep trying.
01Cold open: the backward claim
- Raising your failure rate, not avoiding it, is the lever that raises your success rate, because the brain only updates its model when it gets something wrong.
- Designing a life around avoiding failure means accidentally avoiding the exact experiences that would have led to success.
03Prediction error
- The brain learns through prediction error: it registers 'I was wrong' and updates its internal model, and an attempt is the only way to generate that signal.
- Testing yourself on material before you've studied it, not just after, works because getting it wrong on purpose triggers the same update mechanism.
- Failing through direct experience teaches faster than avoiding the risk of being wrong in the first place.
04The investor's question
- A past business failure functions as proof of experience to investors, not a red flag, because it shows lessons a first-timer hasn't learned yet.
- A single outside question, 'have you ever tried and failed?', can permanently reframe failure from something shameful into something valuable.
05The avoidance-reward loop
- Negative reinforcement means avoiding a feared action removes the anxiety of that moment, and the brain reads that relief as a reward for avoiding, so it keeps choosing avoidance.
- A person stuck avoiding opportunities isn't broken; their brain has simply been reinforced for not trying, the same way any habit gets built through repetition.
- Neuroplasticity means the same reinforcement loop that trained the brain to avoid can be retrained to seek action instead.
06Not trying is the only real failure
- Taking a shot and missing still counts as showing up and generating a learning signal, so it isn't actually failure the way avoidance is.
- The only way to truly lose is to never play the game at all.
07Exploitation vs. exploration
- Fear of failure shifts people into exploitation, repeating known-safe strategies, instead of exploration, the mode where creative breakthroughs actually happen.
- Leaning on 'what's worked before' out of fear can put someone on a path that works for other people but was never really theirs.
- Losing the exploratory, playful mode of working is a warning sign; work that stops being experimented with tends to go stale.
09Tool 1: stop making failure about your identity
- Treat a failed attempt as one data point to analyze, not evidence about who you are, and ask what step in the process actually caused it.
- Optimists isolate a setback to the one situation; pessimists generalize it into a verdict on everything, and that difference in framing is trainable.
- Replacing 'I'm a failure' with 'I'm not good enough at this yet' turns a fixed identity claim into a skill still being built.
10Tool 2: stop hiding your failures
- Sharing failures inside a supportive group removes the shame that keeps most people hiding them in the first place.
- Judging or shaming other people's public failures trains your own brain to expect the same judgment back, reinforcing your own avoidance.
- Deliberately posting a piece of content built to flop, on purpose, is a way to prove to your own brain that failure is survivable, even with a large audience watching.
11Tool 3: reward failing
- A win is already inherently rewarding on its own; the real reward gap is the attempt that didn't land, and it's specifically the effort that most needs reinforcing.
- Reward the attempt itself, not the outcome, because effort is fully within your control while the result usually isn't.
- The reward doesn't need to be elaborate: rest, time with a friend, anything that signals to the brain that trying was worth it.
12Tool 4: create a failure quota
- Set an explicit number of attempts required before earning a reward, for example ten failures, which guarantees far more tries than fear-driven inaction would allow.
- A higher volume of attempts statistically produces more eventual wins along the way, even though the stated goal is to fail.
- Making failure the explicit goal removes the anxiety of being attached to a specific outcome, since there's no longer a way to actually fail.
Terms worth knowing.
- Prediction error
- The gap between what the brain expected and what actually happened. The brain uses this mismatch to update its internal model, which is the mechanism behind learning.
- Negative reinforcement
- Strengthening a behavior by removing something unpleasant when it occurs, rather than by adding a reward, such as removing fear by avoiding a risky action.
- Exploitation vs. exploration
- A behavioral distinction between repeating strategies that already worked (exploitation) and trying new, untested approaches (exploration), the mode where creative breakthroughs tend to happen.
- Failure quota
- A deliberate goal of making a set number of attempts, and accepting the failures along the way, before allowing yourself a reward, used to force more attempts and reduce attachment to any single outcome.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
00:08
“Neuroscience shows that the best way to increase your success rate is to increase your failure rate.”
05:35
“The only way to truly fail in this life is to not try.”
12:53
“I literally posted a video to flop on purpose.”
20:26
“Train your brain to seek failure and you might accidentally end up training it to succeed instead.”
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metaphoranalogystory
Neuroscience shows that the best way to increase your success rate is to increase your failure rate. And I know that sounds backward, because we spend our entire lives trying to avoid failure, and we might not even give something our all because of what it might mean about us if we don't try as hard as we can.
But this is a form of self sabotage because the brain actually learns through making errors.
And the more we spend our lives designing our entire lives around avoiding failure, we accidentally avoid the exact experiences that lead to our success.
Imagine what your life would look like if you weren't afraid to fail. How many opportunities would you go after?
How many different things would you try? How creative would you be?
You might be free to take a lot more chances and make a lot more attempts that would eventually lead to your success. And if you're new here, hi, I'm Emily, also known as M on the Brain. I'm a trained neuroscientist.
I've got two degrees in neuroscience as well as many years of research experience in the lab. I am now a coach to people in over 55 countries all over the world, and I'm here to help you rewire your brain, level up, and live your best life. So let's dive straight into the neuroscience here.
Why do we need to fail? Well, the brain actually learns through something called prediction error.
When we get something wrong, the brain goes, oh, I was wrong. I need to update my model.
And the only way we get things wrong, the only way we know if we're wrong is if we actually make the attempt. And I actually used to apply this intuitively. Back when I was in school and I would be studying for an exam.
I would actually test myself on the information before I had even really studied, and I would do it periodically throughout the studying process.
I would do it like in the beginning and then maybe after a day or two. I would frequently test myself on the information, not because I thought I knew it all, I knew I didn't.
But it was the best way to know exactly what I didn't know and also to kind of trigger my brain, right?
Because getting it wrong triggers your brain to update the model. This is prediction error. Your brain's prediction was wrong, your brain goes, oop, we made an error, let's update the prediction.
And your brain learns really, really well through that process. Failing through experience is one of our greatest teachers.
I remember when I was actually first getting ready to graduate from grad school, I was on the phone with a tech founder in Silicon Valley, and I was just kind of asking him questions, talking to him, getting advice for starting my own business and going into the entrepreneurial world, and something that he asked me was, have you ever tried to start a business and failed?
And I was like, well, no. I haven't done that yet. And he said, okay.
Well, investors, they're actually going to look for that. When you go to investors and ask them for their money, they actually wanna see that you've tried and failed before because that means that you know something. And that was the first experience that really kinda smacked me in the face and kind of shifted my perspective on failure because in that situation, it was actually a good thing.
Oh, failure equals experience, and experience is something that investors look for before they want to give you their money. But that's not all Because avoiding failure actually makes you less likely to succeed.
I'm sure you've heard of positive reinforcement before. Right? If you are training your dog to sit, you give your dog a treat.
You give the dog a reward that positively reinforces the sitting behavior, right?
That's what positive reinforcement is. But there is also something called negative reinforcement in psychology. A negative reinforcement essentially is reinforcing the behavior by removing something bad, removing a negative experience.
Okay? So if you are wanting to achieve a goal, you have a dream, right, but you are afraid. You are afraid.
You're afraid of rejection. You're afraid of failure, whatever it is. Every time you avoid taking action out of fear of rejection, out of fear of failure, you are removing the stress and the fear.
Right? Because if you took that action, it would be stressful. So I'm just gonna not take that action.
I'm just gonna sit back because I'm afraid, because I'm unsure, because I don't feel ready, because I don't know if I'm gonna be rejected. And every time you do that, you reinforce your brain through negative reinforcement.
You remove the anxious feeling through avoidant behavior. Right? Through avoiding the behavior that's gonna get you closer to your dreams, you remove the stress, anxiety, or fear, and you reinforce that avoidance to your brain.
So now your brain is learning and being rewarded by avoidant behavior. And what do you think your brain is going to continue to do in the face of opportunity?
In the face of I could do this. I could make this attempt. I could try.
What do you think your brain is gonna do? Well, it's gonna do what it's been trained to do. It's going to do the thing that it's been reinforced to do, avoid.
Avoid making the attempts to keep you safe because you have essentially rewarded yourself for not trying, and this is the loop that a lot of people get stuck in. Their brains have been rewarded for not trying. They've been rewarded for avoidant behavior for so long that it just feels normal, but you are not the problem.
You are not the problem and you can train your brain to stop doing this, and this is the best part of the brain. Okay? We have this beautiful ability to activate neuroplasticity, to rewire our brain, and to change the behaviors that we reward so that we can actually make attempts and do the work toward achieving our goals and dreams even in the face of fear.
If you are avoiding failure and therefore you don't try, you're not actually avoiding failure because you're not even playing the game.
The only way to truly fail in this life is to not try. If you're not playing the game, you're not even taking the shots. You're not even showing up.
Taking the shots and missing is still showing up and that's not failing because you are learning. And that is how the brain updates its predictions. Remember, this is how you gain experience.
So avoiding failure keeps you from learning, it keeps you from gaining the experience, and it also blocks you from even making the attempt, because it's training your brain to avoid even trying. It also blocks creativity, because we sort of have these two modes in our brains.
In psychology, they call it exploitation versus exploration.
And creativity, which is what leads to success in a lot of fields, okay, we need to be creative, we need to be able to be coming up with ideas. This requires experimentation, exploration.
That's what play is too. Right? Play allows us to explore and experiment.
This is how we come up with a lot of beautiful ideas. Right? And if you are afraid to fail, you are going to shift into exploitation.
You're just gonna rest back on what's always worked, what's worked in the past. This is where people end up on paths they don't even wanna be on, paths that have been laid out before them, that have that have worked for other people, and now you're doing these things, you're taking these actions, you're following these frameworks, you're doing these things that have worked for other people, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it works the best for you, and that also doesn't mean that there isn't something better that is there for you to unlock.
I myself have fallen into this trap before. When I kind of shift into a little bit of when the fear of failure starts creeping in, I start to rest back on what's worked for me in the past, and what I've noticed is one, it takes the joy out of the process because I'm not exploring, I'm not experimenting, I'm not playing, which removes the joy from the process, it removes that play, the whimsical spirit from my work, from what I do, and it also just turns into this like rigid thing and it starts to feel stale.
And when your work starts to become stale, I mean, you already can guess what's gonna happen next. So exploration, experimentation, all of that is required for creativity and for success especially in creative jobs.
And so fearing failure can definitely creep up and hold you back in that arena as well. But now, I wanna make a shift. I wanna talk about how you can train your brain to seek failure, to love failure.
And again, these are not just behavioral mindset hacks. These are actually ways to retrain your brain to assign a new meaning to failure altogether completely shifts the game for you, completely shifted the game for me.
Let's dive straight into it. Number one is to stop making failure about you.
Stop making it about your identity. Stop using failure as information about who you are and start using failure as information, as data that you are collecting.
You are running an experiment and if something fails, okay, that failed. I wonder what step in the process led to failure. I wonder if it was because I skipped the creative process.
It's not about you. This can be applied to so many different areas of life. This is not just about failure.
It is about negative feelings, negative experiences in general.
But when something happens, when you're when you get rejected, when you come up short, when you don't the thing that you want didn't go your way, are you sitting back and making it about you? Are you like, oh god, I'm a failure, like, can't believe I did that. I'm never gonna be able to succeed.
Gosh, I'm not good enough. Or is your reaction, oh, that attempt failed.
What can I learn from it? What can I take from that attempt? What data can I collect?
This is actually in research they've shown a difference between optimists and pessimists. And what optimists do when things go wrong is they keep the information they've collected and that thing that went wrong about the one situation. Pessimists will have something go wrong and make it about the entire world.
They'll blow it up and be like, you see, this is why the world sucks. This is why blah blah blah x y z. Right?
But what optimists do when something goes wrong, they will observe, okay, yeah, this one thing went wrong and they don't take that and apply it to everything in the world. Okay? And you need to do that too when it comes to your failures, it comes to your rejections.
Right? Let's say you get rejected by someone. Are you immediately thinking to yourself, gosh, like I'm not good enough, like maybe I'm not attractive enough, x y z, or are you making it about the situation?
Maybe this person is having a bad day. Maybe the way that I approached this person, I can adjust. Right?
Maybe the conversation I sparked up could have been better. Right? You can make it about gaining skills.
You can make it about certain skills, and as long as you adopt a growth mindset about it, because you can grow, you can improve, you can get better. But stop making your failures about your capabilities and about who you are. So drop I'm a failure, drop I'm not good enough, and at least add a yet.
You're allowed to not be good at something right now. Okay? You're not good enough at it yet.
But with practice, with experience, and with failing a bunch of times, you can get good enough.
You think I was good enough when I first started creating content? Absolutely not. Me as a creator, especially in short form content, because long form is something that I I'm newer at, but with short form content, me as a creator, I am creating completely differently than I was two years ago, three years ago.
Right? The version of me who had a 100,000 followers is completely different as a creator than the version of me who has two, three million. You have a choice between two different identities right now in this moment.
Identity number one is I am successful and therefore I can't fail. Identity number two is I am successful because I am willing to fail.
Which identity do you think is stronger and more resilient? It's definitely identity number two. Okay?
So adopt identity number two. Sometimes the identity shift itself is enough. Number two is to stop hiding your failures.
When you hide your failures, you train your brain to believe that failing is some shameful thing. In my community, in Minecraft, my coaching program and community, we literally share our failures.
Last call, I had everyone getting into the chat and being like, what did you fail at this past week? And I shared mine openly as well. When we share our failures, shame can't exist.
When you're sharing your failures with people that are all loving and understanding and supportive and get but also, what it helps you realize is that everybody's failing all the time. Everyone is trying. Everyone is failing, and if you're not failing, it's because you're not even trying, and that's not something to be proud of.
I think it's actually really cool to fail. I think it's really cool to try and care because that means you're getting outside of your comfort zone and you're growing. This is also why it is really important to be careful of where you are shaming other people for failures.
I have seen it before, especially online, you know, nowadays. You know, people just judging others for failing or, you know, judging or shaming or talking poorly about someone because they failed, and because they failed publicly. Right?
I would be very careful of judging or talking about other people's mistakes or failures because what you're doing is you are training yourself to avoid those exact things because now in your brain, you're gonna think other people are gonna shame and judge you because that's what you're doing to other people. Sometimes I will literally fail on purpose just to show my brain that it is safe.
Back when I hit a million followers on Instagram, there was a short period where I started to take it more seriously and started to fear failure a little bit more just because there were more eyes on me. There was a larger amount of visibility.
Right? And with that, just it just felt a little more pressure than I was used to. Okay?
And when I recognized that I was starting to fear failure a little bit and that blocking me creatively, that was blocking my performance, what did I do?
I literally posted a video to flop on purpose. I literally posted a video, not that not that I thought was bad, but I just knew it wasn't like a viral type of video. It wasn't it was like on purpose.
Like, just posted a video that I wasn't gonna try to make it great at all just to show my brain that it is okay to fail.
It is okay to flop. Right? And this did a really powerful thing for me because it allowed me to feel safe.
It allowed me to look my fears directly in the face. And one thing that I have learned is that when you run straight at your fears, they tend to get out of the way. Number three is to reward failing.
I recently realized in my life that I've been doing it backwards. I celebrate and reward my wins. I reward myself when I achieve something, but but reality is already rewarding when things are going well.
Like inherently, it is rewarding when you achieve something, when you succeed at something, when you win, that's already rewarding.
You wanna go and celebrate that even more? Sure. You can.
Absolutely. As you should, but we should also be rewarding our failures. And I found that it's actually helpful to keep going when we win, like when we have an achievement, when we succeed, like, yeah, okay, cool, like you wanna go and celebrate it like I'm the last one to stop you, but a great way to use the energy of a win is to keep going, to use that momentum, use that energy and produce more, create more, show up more.
We really need the reward, the celebration, the pat on the back, the hug, the matcha, the dinner, the friend time, when we feel like we've shown up and we've given it our all and it still wasn't good enough.
Those are the moments when we need that little reward, when we need that matcha or those shoes that you've been wanting. Right? Those are the moments when we should be rewarding ourselves, especially if you wanna train your brain to stop fearing failure.
You wanna train your brain to actually seek failure? Well, it's the same way as if you want to train your dog to sit, when you when you tell it to sit, you have to give it a treat.
So give yourself a little treat when you fail. This is how you actually start to reward the attempts, and your brain will motivate you to start taking them more often.
So if you took a swing and you got rejected, reward yourself. You applied to all these different jobs and you haven't heard back, reward yourself. You tried something terrifying and it didn't work out, Reward yourself.
Because those are the exact behaviors that we should be rewarding. Because those are the behaviors that you want your brain to motivate you to repeat.
The behavior that we're trying to reward and reinforce isn't necessarily to win because the outcome isn't always in our hands.
But making the attempt is in our hands. Making the effort, putting in our all, trying our best, that is in your hands.
So that's the thing that you should be reinforcing. So stop only rewarding the positive outcomes that you experience and start rewarding your failures. What's gonna happen is your brain is gonna start to learn, oh, failing isn't so bad.
We actually get a little something something from this. And after I had this breakthrough myself and started applying this in my own life, I actually had a moment. I was doing something outside of my comfort zone and it didn't exactly go the way that I wanted it to.
And at first, I was beating myself up. I was like, gosh, why do I keep making this same mistake? Why do I keep doing this?
You know, like, I'm trying to win in this new arena and it's just not perfect yet. And it was someone on my team that literally reminded me, Em, weren't you just talking about this new thing that you're gonna do where you're gonna be rewarding your failures?
And, yes, I was applying this in a different area of my life, and it was showing up for the first time in a in an area that I wasn't planning for it to, because I wasn't planning on failing in this other arena. But when it came up, was like, you know what, no, you're right. I need to reward myself because I'm taking the steps.
I'm making the efforts. I'm taking the swings. And those are the exact behaviors that we wanna be rewarding.
Because the truth of the matter is, if you're trying to win at something new, if you're trying to get good at something new, there are gonna be failures in the process.
There are gonna be times when you have failures or when you get rejected or you have setbacks or you just like don't have extreme clarity yet. You just haven't figured it out totally yet. Like, that is actually normal.
That is a part of the process. That is a part of the winning journey. Failing is a part of the winning journey, so you might as well start rewarding the attempt, start rewarding yourself for having the courage in the first place to try.
And number four brings all of this together, wraps it all up in a beautiful little box, and it is to create a failure quota. Make failing the goal. When I did this, it unlocked an energy in me.
When I made failure the goal, all of a sudden, the creative energy was flowing, the attempts were being made, the swings were just knocking things out of the park. You make failing the goal. You tell yourself, you tell yourself, you want that thing, you want whatever outfit, what what whatever reward that you usually give to yourself, whether it's hanging out with your friends or whatever it is.
You wanna do that? So you gotta fail 10 times first. What that means is you will have to make 10 attempts.
And when you make 10 attempts, odds are not all of those will be failures. So you train your brain, you reward yourself for failing, and you train your brain, you go after those 10 failures, and you might accidentally end up succeeding.
The only way to increase the number of times that you fail is to increase the number of times that you try. So what you're really doing is making it sort of like an attempt quota, but I love making it a failure quota.
I love making it a goal to fail, specifically to fail, because it also allows you to practice detachment. It's like a for detachment because when I started making the attempts, and I'm like, it's okay.
Like, rather than getting anxious or stressed or worrying about the outcome or being attached to the outcome and and and trying to to succeed, trying to make it win. Right? Immediately, whenever that old creepy feeling would come up, my instant reaction was, oh, wait.
No. Like, the goal of this was to fail, so it's fine. When the goal is to fail, there's literally no way to fail.
It's a beautiful unlock. It really is. And again, when you make the goal to fail 20 times, you're gonna have to try it 20 times.
And watch, you're not gonna fail 20 times, and then you're gonna have to try probably 40 times because you're going to be succeeding a lot more too. In the end, the goal is obviously not to become someone who fails all the time. The goal is to become someone who is willing to.
So reward the attempt. Celebrate the flop.
Collect your rejections and make that failure quota. Train your brain to seek failure and you might accidentally end up training it to succeed instead.
And if you want to dive in to the neuroscience of manifestation, you want to learn more about the neuroscience of your subconscious mind, what's blocking you, and exactly how to train the different components of your nervous system, so that you can upgrade your subconscious and upgrade your reality, then check out the link in the description below this episode because there's a link to sign up and RSVP for my free live master class where I break all of this down and answer all of your questions at the end.
So check out the link in the description. I'm sending you so much love. I believe in you.
I'm rooting for you and go out there and fail a bunch of times, please, for me. I'll see you in the next one.
Bye.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
A trained neuroscientist opens with the claim that runs the whole video: your success rate goes up when your failure rate goes up, because the brain literally cannot learn without being wrong first.
Named ideas worth stealing.
08:13list
The Four Tools to Train Your Brain to Seek Failure
- Stop making failure about your identity
- Stop hiding your failures
- Reward failing
- Create a failure quota
A four-step sequence for reversing the brain's default avoidance loop: reframe failure as data, remove the shame of hiding it, deliberately reward the attempt, and set a fixed quota of attempts before allowing a reward.
Steal forany personal-development or coaching content around resilience, rejection, or taking more shots
01:19concept
Prediction error
The brain's core learning mechanism: it registers when an outcome didn't match its expectation and updates its internal model in response, which only happens if an attempt is actually made.
Steal forframing why 'just try it' is a neuroscience-backed instruction, not just encouragement
06:12concept
Exploitation vs. exploration
A behavioral split between repeating known-safe strategies (exploitation) and experimenting with new approaches (exploration); fear of failure pushes people toward exploitation and away from the exploration that creativity requires.
Steal forexplaining why creative work goes stale when someone gets risk-averse
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
20:52link
“check out the link in the description below this episode because there's a link to sign up and RSVP for my free live master class”
A single soft CTA placed at the very end, after the full lesson is delivered, framed as a natural next step for anyone who wants to go deeper on the neuroscience rather than interrupting the teaching.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
