In this Big Think video, we take a closer look at what it means to be a failure – a badge of either shame or honour, depending on our culture’s preference for, or dissatisfaction with, security and the familiar.

Failing is typically seen as moving in the opposite direction of a specific goal, when, in reality, most achievements in history were made possible by a series of non-successes.

“The very concepts of success and failure are words that never really meant anything,” says astronomer Michelle Thaller. She and others argue that successes and failures are inextricably linked, and that how we define them for ourselves is what matters.

As actor and author Ethan Hawke, multidisciplinary filmmaker Karen Palmer, entrepreneurs Steve Case and Tim Ferriss, executive coach Alisa Cohn, and others explain: finding personal success means taking risks, being willing to fail, and recognising when – and why – things are not working.

“Most things will fail, but that doesn’t mean you’re a failure,” Steve Case says. “That just means that idea failed. And what can you learn from that idea and then move forward.”

View the original video here.

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