This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2068.
How to be fearless when you fail.
Welcome to the All Ears English podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times.
Are you feeling stuck with your English?
We'll show you how to become… fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection.
With your American hosts Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, coming to you from Colorado and New York City, USA.
And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglishcom.
Forward slash subscribe.
When a four-year-old asks you, what does failure mean?
What do you say?
Today.
Here's some examples of how we are reframing failure and success for more satisfaction in communication and life.
This Black Friday, stop piecing together random TikToks and YouTube videos that don't lead anywhere.
Join our 2026 English mastery bundle, a complete nine to 12 month curriculum designed for goal oriented learners like you.
You'll follow a clear, structured path from intermediate to high intermediate and even to advanced fluency, with every course flowing naturally into the next.
No gaps, no guesswork.
No searching for extra resources.
Plus, you'll get live speaking practice, community, and teacher support.
It's a done-for-you plan.
Everything you need in one place.
All unlocked with a single one-time investment.
This Black Friday only.
Build your English for the long term.
Start today.
Go to allersenglish.com slash blackfriday to save 50% off the normal price.
Expires at midnight on Friday. allersenglish.com slash B-L-A-C-K-F-R-I-D-A-Y.
Hey, Lindsay, how are you?
I'm feeling good, Michelle.
How's everything going with you?
Everything's good.
Everything's good.
I'm happy to be recording with you today.
So I wanted to share something with you.
So, you know, my four-year-old son is getting smarter by the minute and uh, he is starting to ask a lot of you know instead of you know little.
Really little kids like ask why, why why?
Just randomly about everything.
But now he's starting to ask me some really deep questions, about deep topics, and some of them are easier to answer than others, but one recent one stood out to me as something i wanted to talk about on the show.
Uh, do you want to hear what it was?
Yes, let me know what.
What did he ask?
And this is a question that i feel like a lot of our listeners, no matter the age right, no matter the stage of life, they're going to relate to this right, for sure, for sure.
So the question he asked me was what does fail mean?
So like It was hard for me to answer that question.
And we're going to talk about that today.
We're going to share, you know, what we think about the definition of the word fail.
We're going to talk about some quotes about failure and how this relates to our listeners as well, and language learning.
So I'm sure if anyone has a kid in their lives, they know, you know.
They ask the definition of words and some of them are pretty easy to answer and some are less easy to answer.
And this is an example of one that was tough for me.
What do you think?
Yeah, it relates to all of us, right?
But it's such a key moment for a kid when they become aware of the concept, right?
Because sometimes I wonder words make us aware that the thing actually exists and that it's a thing that society talks about?
And it's kind of a loss of innocence a little bit.
Right, because becoming aware that there is failure and success is, in a sense, a little bit of a loss of innocence.
Know, that's true yeah, now he's starting.
He yeah like, now he also, he has bad dreams.
He asks about bad guys.
He'll say to me like, are there any bad guys in this world?
And i'm like, oh my gosh, how do i answer that question?
Like, do you know?
How do i answer that and that?
Or or what else did he ask me are there any bad guys in this world?
I don't know, he's taught he.
Now he talks about death a little bit.
And I'm like, Oh, no.
Well, we can't we only have time today for the failure issue.
But we're gonna go into the failure one.
But guys, before we talk about that, make sure that you hit follow wherever you are listening to the all ears English podcast, so you never miss anything from us.
Yeah, hit that follow button.
I mean think this is a cool opportunity for any of our listeners to redefine what failure actually means and for you as a parent michelle, to define it in a special way, for your son to set the stage right like yeah i, i didn't want to say oh, it means when you Don't succeed.
Right.
Because I didn't want I don't want to put a fear of failure in his head.
And this this relates to everybody.
This is not an episode only about kids.
Right.
This is, you know, it just kind of was kind of a deep question to me, because I also want him to have him think that failure is part of the learning process.
And it's a good thing because it means you tried.
Right.
But I but I also don't want to shield him too much either.
Like he should know the basic definition of the word.
It's more I think the concept that is the more complicated part.
What do you think?
Oh, my gosh.
I have a lot of thoughts on this.
I mean, I think a lot of it depends on how the parents act around failure.
Right.
What a kid learns.
Right.
And I also think there are certain things that parents can do like.
One thing that sticks with me is you know um, i think her name is sarah blakely, the inventor of spanx.
You know spanx, right?
Yeah yeah sure thanks okay, what?
What are spanx?
By the way, just to let our listeners?
They're like these like uh, i don't know they like they're kind of like leggings or short leggings right, and they yes, like hold in your tummy, i don't really know.
They're kind of a hot item or they were.
They had a major boom.
Women love them.
Uh, super popular, interesting product.
Like they sold.
I think it became a billion dollar company.
I'm pretty sure she's always she's been on shark tank, on shark tank.
Okay, i love that.
But once i read somewhere and i i think this is true, i can't be 100 sure, but i assume it's true is that in her household, every night, they would sit around the table and the parents would ask each of them how did you fail today?
Yes,
Oh my gosh.
I remember that.
Yeah.
She talked about that on Shark Tank.
Oh, she did.
Okay.
So.
Or maybe, or maybe, no, maybe it was in some interview, but I heard that too.
So I find that so telling for what she eventually created, which is a product that was a little bit outside of the box but served a need and became a wildly popular product.
Uh, it's the way parents talk about failure.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
So what do you think?
Like, why do you think that was so powerful?
Like saying, how did you fail today?
Because I think the undertone of most conversations in households for kids growing up is more like how did you, you know, how did you succeed?
Like, what good things did you do?
And that's staying in the box of thinking.
And why would you take any chances if the goal is to succeed?
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
So that's what, yeah, that's what this is about.
Like encouraging kids that, okay, failing is okay.
Take, taking chances is okay, but at the same time not being like oh, just go, fail all your, you know, like don't try, you know.
Right, right, right.
There's a fine line for sure.
And so our listeners, by setting up for yourselves a new spectrum, you know, and that's why we created this idea of connection, not perfection, because that becomes the goal right.
That becomes success.
So you could grammatically make a mistake, but still succeed if your goal is connection.
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So guys, before we get more into this, make sure you listen to.
Episode 2054 was avoid running into English traps and glass doors.
But let's talk about this more.
So, you know, I found a couple of quotes on failure from Forbes dot com that I thought would be good to highlight, because they they really tie into this idea.
Could you read the first one?
Yeah, what would be the first one?
So here's the first one.
I have not failed.
I've just found 10 000 ways that won't work, and of course, that was by the guy who invented the light bulb, Thomas Edison.
Right, and imagine what he did for our society.
I mean an incredible contribution and that's kind of what it takes right, to invent something like that.
That really is kind of what it takes um, to create something so important is failing so many times.
Yeah 100, 100.
And also another one is Coco Chanel.
She said, success is most often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.
Oh, that's really interesting because it's kind of cynical and also very optimistic in the same, in the same quote, isn't it?
Right, right.
It has like a few different meanings, right?
It's like, yeah, we I mean, do you think failure is inevitable?
No, well, I think it depends on how we're defining it.
Right on this show, I know how we define success and failure.
I think it depends.
You create, in a way, we all create our own reality.
We create our reality field and we can go out into the world.
I mean, yes, you have to pay the bills.
Yes, you need shelter, whatever it is that you need to survive in life.
But beyond that, we can define a successful day and an unsuccessful day or project as we want.
So I can't really answer that, Michelle.
That's true.
That's true.
So, yeah, this is complicated.
It really takes a lot of deep thinking about what is what is failure?
What are you okay with taking it as a learning opportunity to get to the next step?
And I think yeah, because if Thomas Edison, like you know, had just had his first failure and said forget it.
There's no way.
I mean, I know, you know, I think, I do think I would say failure is probably inevitable in at some point in our lives, in something.
We're all going to fail at some point in something.
I mean I know that in the startup world, especially the venture backed startup world, they are very proud of their failures.
Like usually, they'll introduce themselves to investors by saying I failed in my first three startups and now I'm ready for I'm raising money for my fourth.
Right.
And that's actually considered a good thing that the investors want to invest in someone who has failed before, because they assume that they've actually learned more than people who have never failed, because the person's probably not built anything before.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think that people have such a fear of failure that it can just make you freeze and not do anything.
And so I think the person who has the mindset of okay, if I fail, I fail and I'm going to learn from it, they're going to be the ones to get something faster than the person who's so scared that they don't do anything
Oh my gosh, 100%.
I think once we start moving and put things in motion, it just becomes so much easier.
And yeah, maybe you do fail quote unquote but then it's never as bad as we think it's going to be right.
We always imagine this nightmare scenario and it never is, right?
There's always another way to recover from that.
Yeah.
Yeah, I love that.
And guys.
We wanted to just take a moment to say thank you to our reviewers, because we feel so lucky to have such amazing listeners who review us.
Lindsay, would you want to read some of them out?
Would love to thank you, michelle.
So thank you to arman sh from finland, uh jupi tt from korea, and this particular reviewer said best podcast for english learning and gave us five stars.
We love that.
Yeah, we love it.
Also thank you to dorna mosolenejad and Sherry Cha from Taiwan, who also left five stars and said All Ears, English podcast is amazing.
When you start to listen to it, you'll love it immediately.
Michelle, how does that make you feel?
All those reviews?
Amazing.
We love hearing from you.
The more listener interaction, the better.
We love to hear from you guys.
So we're really appreciative.
Oh my gosh.
And one reviewer wanted to know where they could find the text of the episodes.
So great question, guys.
If you want to see the transcripts from this episode, you can actually get them delivered to you by email by going to allersenglishcom slash subscribe.
Or if you want to see them in real time, you can try our app at allersenglish.com slash APP.
All right.
Awesome.
All right, guys.
Yes.
Please leave us a review.
Yes.
OK, Michelle, we are back.
So what you know, what did you say again?
What did you say that you.
I mean, I don't remember exactly what I said, but I think I let's see.
I think I wrote it earlier in the episode.
I mean. it was something along the lines of, you know, failure being part of the learning process.
But it may be if you don't succeed the first time, but you know, all of this goes over his head.
It sounds like a very high route answer for a four year old.
But I just didn't want to say to him.
It means when you don't do something right, like that would have been, you know, because that sticks with him.
He remembers things.
So what could I say to him?
I thought I could say to him, like, you know, looking back, Failure is just another chance to learn.
Or I could have said failure is what shows you what you can do better next time.
So I thought like maybe if you brought it up again, I could say those things.
Any what would you say?
Yeah, I think along those lines is good.
Right.
Opportunities for improvement.
Right. um yeah i think it's in my opinion like it's and this is for adults and any any age it's it's less about what we say it's more about how we act around it like when you fail michelle right in your life in front of your kid maybe at home something goes wrong how do you react in that moment right it's more about that i think um so that's the real challenge for all of us because yeah leading from example and just yeah totally yeah and then i mean this i brought all of this up because it reminded me so much of our listeners you know just like this idea of you know freezing up being afraid to use the language we talk about this stuff all the time but i feel like we can never talk about it enough because yes it's so it's so true um and you know it just relates to them i think especially with lindsay you mentioned a connection not perfection that's what we believe totally so when we change that goal we redefine success and failure guys That's where we get the freedom in our minds to go after connection.
And that's going to lead to a happier life, right?
Michelle, we're here to be happy in the end.
Do you agree?
I mean, I agree.
I agree.
Yeah.
So guys, redefine that for yourself.
Connection, not perfection.
Is there any takeaway for today's episode or is that, I mean, is that it or is there anything else?
Basically take risks, guys.
Volunteer, make new friends, try things you hear on the show, see what will happen, you know, and and maybe one day I'll do a follow-up on how to answer a little kid's question.
You don't know how to answer because I'm sure a lot of our, our listeners would would want to know the answer to that.
So what can you say in these situations?
But this, this relates to so much more than little kids, guys.
I think everybody has a feeling about failure or can remember a moment in their life where they feel you know, maybe there was some failure there and what does it mean?
And kind of redefining it in a way, totally.
I mean, i'll give you a practical example.
So in a couple of weeks we're having the podcast conference here in denver.
Right, i'm excited that it'll be in denver for the first time, but i was invited to be on two different panels for some reason, two different groups, you know, people I've met over the years have invited me to be on their panels.
And I could have said no.
I could have easily just said no.
I just want to attend like usual, maybe set up some meetings.
I'm just going to be in the audience, but I accepted.
And yeah, I might say something silly.
I might feel a little embarrassed at times, but I'm going to stand up there on that stage.
And just with the goal of helping people understand podcasting, right?
Yeah, that's great, that's an example.
So i would encourage you guys, our listeners.
What is your next moment of stepping onto the stage?
Quote, unquote right, what is it going to be?
And redefining failure what is this success metric?
Right, love it, love it.
Oh, my gosh, all right.
Well, i'm glad we had this deep talk.
Guys, don't feel fear failure.
And uh, we will see you on the next episode.
All right, good stuff michelle, talk to you soon.
Bye, Thanks for listening to all ears English.
Would you like to know your English level?
Take our two minute quiz.
Go to allearsenglish.com forward slash fluency score.
And if you believe in connection, not perfection, then hit subscribe now to make sure you don't miss anything.
See you next time.
