Meditate on Failure

We learn in the book, Samurai: The Code of the Warrior, about Yamamoto Tsunetomo, a samurai retainer of the daimyo Nabeshima Mitsushige. After the daimyo died, Tsunetomo was required to commit suicide, instead he asked permission to become a Buddhist monk. Permission was granted and for over a decade he lived in a seclusive hermitage.

One day a young samurai arrived and spent the next seven years recording the wisdom of Tsunetomo in the Hagakure or "hidden leaves", the definitive document on the way of the samurai.

In the Hagakure, Tsunetomo says,

"meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lighting, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead."

This on the surface level sounds very grim to think about. As another famous philosopher comedian Jerry Seinfeld once joked,

"According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.

People are afraid of death, so why in my quiet moments, whether you meditate or not this could be before you go to sleep, drinking coffee or even sitting on the toilet. Those quiet moments the last thing you want to do is think about dying or considering yourself dead. We live in our own dangerous times where dying in a fiery car crash, shot in the street for your wallet, slipping on ice, choking on a bone or cancer is a reality on a daily basis just as it was for the samurai.

But the lesson for the samurai is failure equals death, so be prepared for death. In our modern lives, we have protections against death and don't have to welcome death as an honorable end before we feel it is time. We have hospitals, doctors, nurses, medicine, police, air bags and band-aids to keep us safe, but nothing can keep us safe from failure.

We will all fail. Not everyone will fail big or often, but at some point, you will fail. That is our samurai destiny.

Examples include:

• Getting a low score on a test
• Losing a sale
• Failed experiment
• Breaking up from a relationship
• Falling out of a window
• Dropping a glass
• Forgetting a deadline
• Missing a landing at the Olympics
• Being told 'NO'

The Winter Olympics are on. Sometimes I forget how much I love the Winter Olympics. Snow and Ice, winter clothes especially thermal underwear. And especially the amount of focus, determination and grit that skiers, snowboarders and skaters have to compete at the highest level in their sport that is  in the center of our attention for two weeks every four years.

The snowboarding half-pipe event is my favorite of all the events, and failing is an option. You can fail big in snowboarding in two different ways: missing a trick or crashing, the worst of the two. Of course each one has a thousand sub-errors that can occur: not enough speed, too much wind, loose boots or anything that can happen, does happen. So an Olympic snowboarder needs to meditate on failure.

An Olympic snowboarder should not only meditate on failure. They need to meditate on success and failure. The best performances in my high school marching band days were those that I visualized success. I rested my mind and went through the show, the notes, the steps as perfect as they could be. But I do remember thinking, "even if I do my best, what will happen if it's not good enough. How would losing feel?" I would then imagine us losing. Why would I put myself through that? The answer to that question is to prepare myself for failure.

As Tsunemoto would meditate on dying in battle, he was preparing himself for a situation that could occur and how he would react to it. The same that an Olympic snowboarder is about to do battle with the half-pipe and they have to be prepared to win and to die.

Steven Pressfield writes in Turning Pro,

"The sword master advancing into ritual combat has inwardly made peace with his own extinction. He is prepared to leave everything, including his life, there on the fighting floor."

We can adapt this mentality to face the challenges in our modern lives. Everyday you look at a project, you need to prepare to make millions or to make nothing; to win gold or to finish last; cut down your opponent or be cut down and die.

Failure is everywhere and it is hard to think about, because if we do, it might come true. Yet, it is still all around us, so we have to be prepared for it. The more prepared we are the less it will sting; the more we can learn from it; the easier it will be to stand up, charge up the mountain and do it all over again knowing we left everything there on the fighting floor.