Top Takeaways from Elizabeth Day
Elizabeth Day, whose How to Fail podcast has spent the best part of a decade asking well-known people what they got wrong, sat down with performance psychologist Jamil Qureshi to make the case that failure is not the opposite of success but a precondition for it. Drawing on elite sport, business and her own life, she argued that vulnerability and honest reflection do more for resilience than any amount of positive thinking.
Top Takeaways
On the pressure to optimise
“We live in an age where we are fetishising the idea of self-optimisation, where we, as human beings, have to become human doings to earn our place on this planet. We have to constantly prove our worth, whether it’s tracking our steps or taking in enough protein, and that’s exhausting. The thing that connects us more deeply, the shortcut to true human connection, is sharing our vulnerabilities and the moments where things go wrong. Because that is the one thing guaranteed to connect every single person in this auditorium: we have all failed. We might have tried our hardest not to, but we will still fail.”
On comparison
“We live in an age of online culture where we can easily compare our neurotic, isolated insides with everyone else’s curated version of their own perfection.”
“We are comparative beings. We are tribal beings. We seek to understand ourselves in relation to others. And the thing about failure is that it strips you of those certainties.”
On where How to Fail came from
“I launched my podcast and thought, what can I learn about failure from talking to people? When I launched How to Fail, I didn’t know what I was doing, and I failed in many ways when I was launching it. I’m incredibly grateful to everyone here for supporting that journey.”
On defining success
“Success is a series of accomplishments that are personal to the individual, and that has something to do with how we see failure.”
“I think authenticity is really the core of true success, as far as I’m concerned. Everyone has to define success for themselves.”
On questioning the plan
“What failure is, is when life doesn’t go according to plan. But then you have to question the plan. Where did this plan come from? I had to question whether it was my plan for myself, whether it came from my authentic desires, or whether it was something I had inherited or been conditioned to think I wanted.”
On not taking it personally
Jamil Qureshi: “The best sports people don’t take failure personally. You can fail, but that doesn’t make you a failure.”
“Today’s world is so disrupted, so complicated, so unpredictable, that you can make a good decision and get a bad outcome.”
“No one comes into the world knowing all the answers. Blame looks backwards, and responsibility looks forwards.”
On who gets to fail
“We live in a society that still enables certain types of people to fail upwards, and doesn’t give other types of people the same opportunities.”
On imperfection in the age of AI
“Imperfection is a beautiful human thing, and that is increasingly important in the age of AI. The one thing we have over AI is our imperfection, our flaws. Those will be the things that end up saving us, because it’s through our imperfections that we find ourselves, that we find our uniqueness. The cracks where the light gets in.”
On interviewing the Prime Minister
Asked by Jamil what Andy Burnham was like when she interviewed him for How to Fail shortly after he became Prime Minister: “Overwhelmingly, it was what I perceived as his honesty, sincerity and candour. It felt as though I was speaking to a human being who felt things. To see the human side of our Prime Minister in that way felt like a radically shifting moment in political culture.”
On what to do after a mistake
“It’s about getting back to your core self and your core values, and being led by that authenticity. Sometimes the decision might not make sense at the moment, or it might not make sense to other people, but you need to live with it, be at peace with it, and instinctively feel that it is in alignment with your purpose and your values.”
Further Reading
- How to Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong, Elizabeth Day (Fourth Estate, 2019). Link
- Failosophy: A Handbook for When Things Go Wrong, Elizabeth Day (Fourth Estate, 2020). Link
- Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict, Elizabeth Day (Fourth Estate, 2023). Link
- The Mind Coach: Be the Person You Really Want to Be, Jamil Qureshi (Vermilion, 2008). Link
- Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed (John Murray, 2015). Link
- Mindset: How You Can Fulfil Your Potential, Carol Dweck (Robinson, 2012). Link
Further Listening and Watching
- How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, podcast, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Link
- Open Book, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds, presented by Elizabeth Day. Link
- Brené Brown: The Call to Courage, Netflix, 2019. Link
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