"There is no such thing as failure. There are only results"
About this Quote
Robbins is selling a mental reframe that functions like a productivity hack and a moral permission slip at the same time. By declaring “failure” nonexistent, he strips the word of its social sting: no shame, no exile, no identity label that sticks. What’s left is “results” - a cooler, businesslike term that implies measurability, iteration, and control. The move is classic self-help rhetoric: swap a judgment for a datum, and you swap paralysis for motion.
The subtext is less airy than it looks. “Failure” isn’t just an outcome; it’s a story people tell about who they are and what they’re allowed to attempt next. Robbins knows the story is often enforced by audiences - bosses, parents, peers, the algorithmic scoreboard of modern life. Calling everything a “result” is an attempt to reclaim agency from that crowd. You can’t be “a failure” if all you have are outputs you can tweak.
Context matters: Robbins rose with the late-20th-century boom in entrepreneurial optimism and high-performance coaching, a culture that treats the self as a project and emotions as variables. The line works because it borrows the authority of science-speak (results!) while sidestepping its rigor. Not all “results” are morally neutral; some are catastrophic. Yet that’s also why it resonates: it’s not a philosophy seminar, it’s a tool for people stuck in perfectionism, fear of judgment, or learned helplessness. The bargain is simple: trade the comfort of labels for the discomfort of feedback, and you get your next attempt back.
The subtext is less airy than it looks. “Failure” isn’t just an outcome; it’s a story people tell about who they are and what they’re allowed to attempt next. Robbins knows the story is often enforced by audiences - bosses, parents, peers, the algorithmic scoreboard of modern life. Calling everything a “result” is an attempt to reclaim agency from that crowd. You can’t be “a failure” if all you have are outputs you can tweak.
Context matters: Robbins rose with the late-20th-century boom in entrepreneurial optimism and high-performance coaching, a culture that treats the self as a project and emotions as variables. The line works because it borrows the authority of science-speak (results!) while sidestepping its rigor. Not all “results” are morally neutral; some are catastrophic. Yet that’s also why it resonates: it’s not a philosophy seminar, it’s a tool for people stuck in perfectionism, fear of judgment, or learned helplessness. The bargain is simple: trade the comfort of labels for the discomfort of feedback, and you get your next attempt back.
Quote Details
| Topic | Failure |
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