However, there is tremendous value to be gained from failing. The tricky part is uncovering the value behind that stone wall of disappointment. It can be accomplished in a few simple steps: (1) recognize that there is a lesson to be learned each time you fail, (2) calm yourself, and (3) find the lesson and learn from it.

Learning from Your Mistakes is Less Costly Than You Think

A common misconception about mistakes is that they are too costly. “What if I lose money?” “What if someone laughs at me?” “What if I lose to a lucky draw?” Everybody wants to avoid making mistakes. Everybody thinks they have something to lose when they really have everything to gain. A lot of people want to succeed without paying the price. This is the wrong attitude to have. Unfortunately, this attitude is too prolific and celebrated. It’s generally accepted to whine and complain. It’s “unfair” when you lose and you’re justified because you feel you deserve to win. Failure is just some unknown force telling you that you’re not good enough to succeed. It’s just luck right?

This is the wrong way to think. If you want to succeed at anything then you need to act like you really want it. Players who win big in this game lose a few matches along the way. They learn from their mistakes, and then move on to success. They pay the price for their success. There isn’t a shortcut to this process. If you want one, the only one that I know of (which I’ve mentioned before) was summarized by the founder of IBM, Herman Hollerith:

“Do you want a shortcut to success? It’s quite simple really. Double your rate of failure.”

Failing at the normal rate is hard enough. Why make it more frequent? The only reason you want to do this is to learn more lessons than everyone else and ultimately achieve your goals more quickly. Putting it into a Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG perspective means that you should go to more tournaments and increase your practice sessions. It’s not as easy as simply losing more often. Anyone can lose more than they already do. The “secret” is to become astute in gleaning the valuable lessons from each genuine loss. There is always room for improvement.

My friend Josh Graham put this into perspective for me recently. I asked him, “What is the difference between a consistent Shonen Jump Top 8er and everyone else?” His answer was astonishingly simple: “They practice more. They always test their ideas until they are the best they can be.” Doubling your rate of failure might yield you rewards far greater than you thought possible.

Losing isn’t as costly as it may appear to be. If you learn from these experiences, then you are much better off. Remember that: experience is valuable only if you learn from it. If you’re an up-and-coming player and don’t have a ton of experience, use this formula to catapult your way out of obscurity into victory. Having experience doesn’t mean much if the person hasn’t learned anything from it. No need to worry if you’re up against a veteran with three or four years of experience. If he or she hasn’t learned from it, then he or she just has one year of mediocre experience repeated three or four times. Don’t ever let anyone intimidate you with their “experience.” If they have to tell you about how long they’ve been playing this game and how great they are,  then they might not have the skills to back it up.

To proceed forward, you must make mistakes, and correct your course as needed. It’s very much like a guided missile approaching its target. It has sensors to keep it on course to its target. Since its target can move, the missile can change its path using the feedback devices built into it to examine the situation. You too have built-in “feedback mechanisms” that tell you how to adjust your bearings. You just have to pay close attention to them so you don’t over-correct and miss your target completely. This guided missile analogy is useful. You can apply it to your own efforts in the game. Keep this in mind: no one ever achieves success via a straight line.

The Magic of Calm

The toughest part of learning from your mistakes is getting past the natural frustration that comes along with them. It’s an automatic response. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t get frustrated after he or she fails to achieve a desired goal.

Tackling frustration and disappointment is done more effectively by taking an aggressive attitude toward it. Resolve to not let your emotions beat you. You’ve got much bigger fish to fry, and while it’s normal to get upset, try not to take it harder than others. One thing to do is to look at each failure as an isolated incident. You are not a failure because you failed once. Failure is just a state of mind.

Game day is easily the most emotionally charged event of your week. Feelings of doubt are magnified exponentially by the nature of the event and by the 50% of the competitors who just lost their match last round. It is very poisonous to your mental state to harbor negative thoughts after a match loss. You’ll just begin to exhibit the absurd behavior that comes with that “loser” mentality. Before you know it, you’ll gather in a circle of other whining “victims of circumstance,” sharing “war stories” about how they were “cheated” out of a win. Plus, you’ll collect a few more losses and a dismal win/loss record.

Instead of engaging in the normal water cooler conversation, why not take a short walk outside? After you get outside, take three deep breaths and replay the round in your mind to find where it went wrong. Very rarely do you lose because of a miraculous stroke of luck on your opponent’s part. Mull over how you can approach the situation differently if it were to happen again next round.

Once that spider web of resentment has disappeared, walk back into the event. It would be wise to avoid anybody who looks like they have a “victim” story to tell, even your buddies. You don’t need to flood your mind with thoughts you just spent the last ten minutes getting rid of. If they refuse to leave you alone, then you can use evasive phrases like, “Tell me about it later,” “I just need a minute to walk around,” “I have to use the restroom,” or, “I will be back in a bit.” Don’t worry, you’re not being rude, and don’t be too concerned if they perceive you as being rude. You’re just trying to get back into a tournament-winning mindset.

It’s Time to Teach You a Lesson!

A characteristic about valuable lessons I find to be very funny is that they are the least obvious component of the failure experience. In other words, the lesson is always hidden behind the multiple layers of negative emotion, negative memories, and the constant stimuli of the environment you’re in. It takes willpower to put everything aside at first, and then analyze what really happened. We tend to exaggerate past experiences to justify our emotions about them. The emotional effect is magnified even more if we put in a particularly large amount of effort to do well before the experience occurred. We literally create mental monsters out of minor events.

Finding the root cause and extracting the lesson from failure is something you need to develop as a habit. I’m still working on it myself. It’s not easy, but the payoff is enormous if you succeed. Aside from the obvious benefits of newly learned skills, experience, and the like, you’ll become a much smarter player. The more effective your dueling abilities are, the greater your chances of winning big on the tournament scene will be. Dedicate yourself to finding the lesson in every negative experience, and not just in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG either. You can apply this technique to anything. Develop the habit and you’ll reap the rewards.

Thanks for reading. Talk to you next week! 

—Bryan Camareno