I don’t know how other people perceive failure, it’s not important. I for one, hate it. It demotivates and sets me off. I cannot lie, it’s been like that my whole life. The only difference in managing those feelings 20 years ago with now is that I learned not to give up. Failing means being one step closer to the goal.

There is one situation though that I have been thinking about for the past few months, which I call a masked failure. Or failure that looks like success or idling.

It’s quite simple. Let’s take nutrition as an example. You take a diet for 5 months, and you see great results by the end of the 5th month. At the start of your 6th month, you feel things are under control and subtly start cheating. You are thinking you can get back to your rituals any time you want. Two months pass by, you are still there. You weigh yourself, the scale goes up significantly. “How is it possible?” you ask yourself. Well, it’s because you’ve been failing for the past 2 months, but you thought you were doing good.

Perceived success is worse than measured success because it’s abstract, it doesn’t exist anywhere other than in our heads. Perceived success leads to setbacks.

Applied in many other areas of life, this mind trap is dangerous because its repercussions are difficult to fix. The misalignment of what you think is happening and what the reality is will hit hard and derail you from your major goal.

I cannot say personally I found a model that works in dealing with situations like this, but I am thinking, that what might help is to consider these desires as a side-effect (or as a noise) in life while keeping the main road clear for achieving our goals.

If the trajectory is set to becoming a dedicated writer with habit and passion to write, then that’s what you need to do as a main thing for the day. Consider it the hardest part of the day, do it and then do the side-effects. Or if you want to eat that donut, eat it, but only after you do your 5k in the morning.

Deserve and own your side effects.