Never Confuse a Single Defeat with the Final Defeat

One of America’s most beloved writers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was also one of its greatest motivators. He is famously quoted as saying, “never confuse a single defeat with the final defeat.” Losing a battle for the sake of winning the war is an imperative skill to master.

We think of successful people as winners. The championship team, the hall of fame athlete, the victor. The truth is that successful people are not so because they constantly win. They are successful because they don’t. They face setbacks like everyone else. What separates the successful from the average is that the successful don’t give up when there is a set-back. They fall down, but keep getting back up. They see challenges as opportunities not as problems designed to prevent them from success.

The American landscape is littered with people who failed continuously until they eventually succeeded. Thomas Edison is famous for stating that he didn’t fail, he simply found 10,000 ways that did not work. He did not confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. Instead, he invented the light bulb.

Take the now famous example of PayPal. Founder Max Levchin loves to point out that his first start-up venture was not wildly successful. In fact, he continually failed:

The very first company I started failed with a great bang. The second one failed a little bit less, but still failed. The third one, you know, proper failed, but it was kind of okay. I recovered quickly. Number four almost didn’t fail. It still didn’t really feel great, but it did okay. Number five was PayPal. – Max Levchin, former CTO of PayPal

This mindset of picking yourself back up after being knocked down stretches throughout history and is a marker of the successful man. Even the Bible tells you “For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises again, But the wicked stumble in time of calamity.” (Proverbs 24:26). The Japanese have a similar mantra practiced by martial artists. It is called their “Tamashii” or their indomitable spirit. The mantra is “Nana-Korobi, Ya-Oki” which translates as “Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight”.

When you were a child, this mentality was second nature. You fell down when learning to walk. You fell off of your bike while learning to ride. But you kept going. Today, walking is second nature, riding a bike takes no effort. This is true because you did not see your setbacks as defeat, but rather a challenge to be overcome and conquered.

When we became adults, we starting finding excuses for our failures. We started confusing a single set back with total defeat. We cover up our mistakes, we become spin masters. We are great lawyers of our own mistakes and great judges of the mistakes of others. But excuses do not make you a better man. Excuses make you weak. Facing your defeats head on, learning from them, and overcoming them are what will transform you from average to unstoppable.

Don’t just take my word for it. Listen to what one of the greatest professional athletes of all time has to say: