Transcript - “Listening Time” Episode 99

Welcome to the Listening Time podcast. Hey everybody, this is Conner, and
you're listening to Episode 99 of the Listening Time podcast. We're almost at Episode
100. I'm excited for that. And I want to thank you all for listening and for helping me
reach that milestone. That's really cool that we're going to hit Episode 100.
And of course, I'm going to do questions and answers-type episode for that
one. And I've received a lot of questions from you guys. And so, I'll be recording that
episode pretty soon, and I'll choose some of those questions to answer in the next
one. So, thank you all for your questions as well.
And remember that if you want my advanced podcast episodes, if you want to
practice with real English, where I speak fast, then make sure to sign up to become a
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And of course, if you want to ask me your questions every week regarding
English or language learning, then become a Listening Time VIP, and you'll have access
to my weekly Q&A sessions, where you asked me questions and I answered them in
video format. So, if you're interested in any of that, make sure to click on the link in the
Episode Description. That's www.patreon.com/listeningtime
Alright, in today's episode, we're going to talk about failure. This is a good topic
to talk about because we all fail, right? Nobody's perfect. And it's important to know
how to deal with failure, how to think about this concept of failure, etc. So, we'll talk
about that today.
And remember that if you need the transcript for this episode, that's below the
episode in the Episode Description. So, click on that if you need it, and listen as many
times as you need until you can eventually understand everything that I'm saying
without using the transcript.
And if you like this podcast, please share it. Please send it to other people, other
friends or family members that are learning English, and help the podcast grow, and
help them with their English. And don't forget to give it a ve-star rating and write a
positive review if you can. That really helps me out as well. Alright, let’s get started.
Okay, so let's talk about failure. First of all, it's important to recognize that we all
fail. Nobody is perfect. And so, we're going to make mistakes. We're going to not
succeed sometimes. And that's completely normal. And sometimes we can get the
impression that we fail much more than other people.
And other people have their lives in order and are achieving great things and
doing so much with their life or just their day, because when we use things like social
media, we see other people posting the things that they want you to see, and those
things are usually the positive things. They're not going to post about all of their
failures, all the times they didn't succeed. They're going to post about the things that
they did that will impress you, that will look good on social media.
And so unfortunately, when we use these types of apps, we're only seeing the
positives in other people's lives. And this can make us feel like we have much more
negative or depressing lives than other people, because we're comparing the best of
those people to our normal lives. And of course, their lives are going to look much
better than ours if we make that type of comparison.
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 So, don't be fooled by his social media, because other people fail just like you.
Remember that the word “fool” means to deceive someone. So, if I say, “Don’t be
fooled,” I'm saying don't be deceived. And don't be overly afraid of failure. I think we
shouldn't want to fail, of course. We shouldn't be happy to fail.
However, we also shouldn't be overly afraid of failure. We don't we don't want to
be terri ed that we're not going to succeed when we start something, because that will
prevent us from actually doing things. If we're scared to fail, we’ll probably just not do
whatever it is that we planned on doing. So, don't be overly afraid of failure.
And it's really important to learn from failure. So, failure is going to happen in our
lives. And we can respond to that failure in di erent ways. And the best way to respond
to that failure is to learn from it, to see what lessons we can take from that failure and
how we can do things di erently the next time.
So, that's something that we want to do when we fail. That's the attitude that we
should have when we are facing failure. We should say, “Okay, this is a learning
opportunity.” That's the attitude that we want to have. We never want to let failure
completely destroy us and make us feel like we're bad people, or whatever. We should
try to learn from the times we don't succeed, and then do things better the next time.
And I want to talk a little more about learning from failure, because this is
something that I think we hear about a lot, how we should learn from failure and get
better the next time. However, I think that there is a good amount of research that
shows that many people don't actually learn well from most of their failures. They
actually have a type of mental obstacle that is hard for them to overcome in order to
learn from their failures, sometimes.
And in English, the word “overcome” refers to getting past some di culty, right?
You are confronted with some problem, some trouble, some di culty, whatever, and
you overcome it. You're able to succeed in getting past that issue, whatever it is. You
overcome that di culty.
So, research shows us that people can have trouble learning lessons from their
own failure. And sometimes, they don't really focus on their failures, and they just want
to forget about them or not learn lessons from them sometimes. And I want to mention
one speci c experiment, one speci c study that was done that demonstrates this.
So, in this experiment, researchers had a group of people take a test, and in this
test, there were questions that had two choices. One of them was right, and one of
them was wrong for each question. Okay? So, they had a 50% chance of getting each
question right. So, the people took this test, and then after that, they were shown their
right and their wrong answers. So, they got to see which ones they got right and which
ones they got wrong.
And then, they took the test again. They took the test a second time. And so,
they had already seen all of their right and wrong answers from the rst one. So, it was
supposed to be easier the second time. And there was also a reward the second time
for each time they got the answer right. So, they were given a little bit of money every
time they got an answer right on the second test.
And what was interesting is that most of the people remembered their correct
answers from the rst test. So, they were able to remember those and answer them
correctly again on the second test. However, many of the people didn't remember as
many of their incorrect answers from the rst test. So, they answered those same
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 questions incorrectly again on the second test. Even though they were shown their
results from the rst test, and they were shown all of the answers that they got right
and wrong, regardless of that, they tended to remember their correct answers, but not
their incorrect answers.
And so, this experiment shows us that some people have trouble learning from
their failure. They might tend to focus on the successes that they had and the lessons
that they can learn from their success, and then they might just forget their failures, and
try to move on and not really think about them too much. And that's a shame, I think,
because we can learn a lot from our failure, and we can do things di erently in the
future, to have more success. So, I think that that should be our goal.
And so, I want to talk about three speci c failures that I've encountered in my
life, and the lessons I learned from them. So, the rst failure I want to talk about is lm
school. I think I mentioned in a previous episode that I attended lm school when I was
18. I thought that I wanted to work in the lm industry and make lms, and that was
something that I had as a dream when I was young and a little immature, and I didn't
know what exactly I wanted to do. And I thought that lm sounded interesting.
So, I went to lm school, and I very quickly realized that I didn't like it. I realized
that I didn't like any of the technical aspects of lmmaking, and I realized that I didn't
like the industry at all. I didn't like the culture in that industry. I didn't really like anything
about it. And that was really disappointing because I had signed up for a one-year
course that was very intense, and I had to do a lot of stu every day during that
program.
And so, I didn't actually nish the program. I actually stopped halfway through
and dropped out of lm school. In English, when we use the phrasal verb “drop out,”
when you drop out of school or drop out of a program, what we're saying is that you
don't nish it. You actually quit, in a way. And so, I dropped out of lm school and only
did half of that year.
And so, what did I learn from this failure? Well, one lesson that I learned is that I
shouldn't commit to things that I'm not very sure about. So, it's okay to commit to
things that you're not 100% sure about… maybe you're 95, 99%, or whatever.
However, for me, I hadn't really done my research on the lm industry and on what
would be required of me to work in this industry, and what the lifestyle is like. I didn't
really do my research on that.
And so, I was very naive when I entered into this program, and I thought it would
be easy and just fun and that I would be really good and I would be a natural in this
industry. And so, that was not the case, and I should have known that beforehand. I
shouldn't have committed to going to this program and trying to become a lmmaker,
because I didn't really know anything about this. I committed to this without knowing
much. So, that was something that I learned, is that I shouldn't commit to things that I
don't know much about. I should be much more sure before committing.
And another thing that I learned from this failure is that I shouldn't continue with
something if I know for sure that it's wrong, if I know for sure that it's not for me. So,
this is something I realized when I was in lm school, that this was the wrong choice.
And so, I needed to just stop and not be disappointed that I wasn't going to nish my
program. I should just stop now and not waste my time and move on to the right thing.
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 So, it's okay if you stop something early if you know for sure that it's the wrong thing.
You shouldn't feel like you always have to nish everything, even if it's wrong.
So, here’s kind of a simple example of this, is that if you're reading a book, and
you realize that you don't really like this book when you're about a quarter of the way
through it, you should just stop reading. You don't have to force yourself to nish the
whole book if it's like torture for you.
In English, when we say that you're “a quarter of the way through” something, or
you're “halfway through” it, this means that you're a quarter of the way done, or you're
halfway done. So, if you're a quarter of the way through it, and it's really boring for you,
you don't like it, you don't have to nish it, right? You can stop if you want. And so,
that's something that I learned from lm school.
And another failure that I had is with my website. So, I used to have a website
that's not available now. But I made a big mistake with this website because it wasn't
well thought out. In English, if we say something is “well thought out,” this means that
you have really thought things through before doing that thing. You've considered all
the di erent aspects of it and you plan it in an e ective way before you do it, this is
something that's well thought out.
So, this website was not well thought out. It had a poor model. During that time,
I released $1 seminars that would expire in a certain amount of time, and you had to
sign up for those seminars through the website. And it just wasn't a very intuitive
model, and it wasn't very attractive, and I wasn't having a lot of success with it. And it
was just the wrong thing. This was not the way I needed to go about my business.
And then, I switched to my membership model after that. And now I use the
Patreon website to release content every month, and this content does not expire. You
can watch it whenever you want. It's not going to go away. By the way, in English, the
verb “expire” means that something goes bad or it goes away after a certain amount of
time.
So, my content doesn't expire. You can continue to consume it forever as long
as you're a member. And that's a much better model. People like that a lot better. And
I'm having a lot more success with that. And so, of course, my old website does not
exist anymore. That was a failure.
And I learned that I need to think more about my students, my customers, so to
say, and what they want, what they need… not what I think is an interesting thing to
o er. I need to think about what my students actually want, what they're actually
looking for. So, that's a lesson that I learned.
And I learned that when you start something on your own, a business or
whatever, there will always be failures along the way, and you just need to accept that
and expect it and move past those failures, overcome those failures. That acceptance
of knowing that you will fail when it comes to starting something on your own, that’s
something that you should enter into that project with.
You should enter in with that mindset, knowing that you're not going to get
everything right the rst time. You might have some failures with your website, or
whatever. And that's normal. So, that's important for people that want to start
something on their own. They shouldn't expect to get it right the rst time. There's a lot
of trial and error. That just means that you're going to make mistakes and then learn
from those mistakes.
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 And one other failure I had was that I bought a car last year that had so many
problems, and I didn't even realize it when I bought the car. This was a very old used
car. And I don't know anything about cars, and so I just thought that it was a good deal
because I was able to negotiate the price down from the original price, and I thought I
was getting it for a cheap price. And that's the only thing that I really considered. I was
able to get this car for cheap.
And because I don't know anything about cars, I bought a car that I shouldn't
have bought. And it had many problems. I had to take it to the mechanic to x tons of
things. And I realized that we had to put a lot of money into this car, and it ended up
being much more expensive than what I had thought. And we ended up actually selling
this car for less than what we bought it for. So, I ended up losing a lot of money on this
car. It was a terrible mistake. And it was a mistake that I learned lessons from because
I don't want to make this mistake again.
So number one: I learned that I should not make these types of big decisions
when I don't have the knowledge to make them. So, I don't know anything about cars,
so I shouldn't make a big decision without consulting experts rst, or at least people
that know a lot more than I do. That's something that I need to do before making such
a big decision and spending money like this.
And I learned that discounts can still be a waste of money. You can think that
you're getting a discount, but at the end of the day, it's such poor quality, that you have
to spend more money to repair that thing. So, discounts aren't always a good deal. You
might actually still lose money.
And one other lesson that I learned is that, sometimes, it's better to take your
losses and move on. It wouldn't have been good for me to try to wait until I could get a
better price for this car or x it up so that I could sell it for even more money. No, it was
better for me to just sell it for a lower price, move on, and get on with my life because it
was causing me so much stress, and I just needed to get rid of this car and get some
money back and move on with my life. Because like I mentioned, I was so stressed out
about this. So, it was better for me to just accept the fact that I was going to lose
money.
Alright, that's all for today. I hope this episode was interesting for you.
Remember that if you want my advanced episodes, then make sure to sign up and
become a Listening Time Family Member. The link is in the Episode Description below
this episode. That’s www.patreon.com/listeningtime
And please share this podcast with anyone else you know who's learning
English, and help them, and help the podcast grow. Alright, I'll talk to you next time on
Episode 100 of the Listening Time podcast.
*Click on this link to access my Q&A Sessions, Advanced Podcast Episodes, Bonus
Episodes, and Listening Practice Seminars: www.patreon.com/listeningtime
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