August 18, 2026 | Issue Archive
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Failure Is Available on Both Paths
When leaders call me to talk about their events, they tell me “our people are struggling with change.”
When I talk to people after a keynote, I hear something different.
Yes, everyone is feeling the weight of change. But it sounds more like this:
I’m always behind.
I can’t finish enough in a day.
The expectations aren’t reasonable. Nobody’s hearing me.
I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be working on.
I’ve heard a lot of those comments this year. And if you notice, almost none of them describe a crisis. They describe a Tuesday. And then another one.
So where is the relief?
Somewhere underneath it, most people already know the thing that needs to end. The account that will never close. The commitment they said yes to 11 months ago. The role they’ve outgrown. The conversation they keep not having.
They’re not confused about what it is.
They’re moving too fast to decide.
And that’s the part nobody names.
When you’re that far behind, deciding feels like one more task on a list you’re already losing. So you don’t. You stay. You keep going.
And that feels like the safe option, because it doesn’t require anything from you today.
But you didn’t avoid the risk of staying. You just stopped calculating it.
Here’s why your brain does this to you.
Your brain is a forecasting machine. It runs constantly, predicting what’s coming so it can get you ready. And it is very good at forecasting the unfamiliar path.
Imagine ending the thing, and it delivers the whole package. Tight chest. Racing thoughts. Every way this could go wrong.
Then it reads its own alarm as proof. The fear feels like evidence.
Now imagine staying exactly where you are.
Nothing. No alarm. No forecast at all.
Not because staying is safe. Because it’s known. Your brain doesn’t run a threat forecast on the thing you’re already doing, no matter what it’s costing you.
So you end up choosing between one option that comes with a warning label and one that comes with silence. And you call that a careful decision.
It isn’t. It’s a rigged question.
Here’s the reality check:
Failure is available on both paths.
You can fail by acting. You can also fail by staying exactly where you are for another eighteen months.
One of those failures announces itself. The other one just quietly takes the eighteen months.
So let’s change the question.
Would I rather live with regret, or with the possibility of failure?
If I try something different and it doesn’t work, what I live with is this: I chose. I tried. That didn’t go the way I thought it would.
That’s recoverable. People recover from that constantly.
Regret is different. You don’t get that back.
I know both of these firsthand. I’ve wanted a better relationship and stayed in a marriage past its ending. I’ve wanted financial success and sat in bankruptcy court. So many times I’ve wanted change, and not changed.
Desire was never what was missing. The decision was.
THIS ENDS NOW
The belief that you’ll decide when things calm down.
They don’t calm down. You already know this. You’ve been telling yourself that sentence for a year and the list is longer than it was.
You don’t need a quieter week. You need four minutes and one decision you’ve already made privately and haven’t said out loud.
THIS MOMENT MATTERS
Stop reading for a second. Put your feet flat on the floor. Breathe in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.
Now, bring up the thing. The one that came to mind three paragraphs ago and you pushed it back down.
Don’t solve it. Just ask:
Would I rather live with regret, or with the possibility of failure?
Sit with the answer. That’s all today asks of you.
Up we go—
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P.P.S. If you happen to know a team or an organization looking for a keynote speaker this fall, don’t keep me a secret 🤫—introductions and referrals are always appreciated!