EverydaySpy Podcast - Why Others Fail and You Don't Have to

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

Everyone loves to talk about opportunity, hope, and new beginnings at the start of a new year. But a conversation about Failure might be more productive. In this episode, Andrew breaks down how elite operatives view, process, and ultimately avoid failure even when the odds are against them. If you have felt the sting of failure, or worry that you may be failing, this is a conversation you don't want to miss... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is Everyday Espionage. Over Thanksgiving in 2020, I ran the newest mission in my Operation Real Time spy training simulation series. If you haven't found Operation Real Time, you can find it on the website Everydayspy.com, or you can just go right away to Everydayspy.com forward slash operations. It's been a blast to run Operation Real Time and to see people come in and test themselves in this real-time spy simulation. Now, over Thanksgiving, I ran the next event in that series, which was a virtual mission called Conspiracy.

And I ran conspiracy myself. It was live. It was real-time. The weekend of Thanksgiving. It was a blast. But in the mission, participants were pitted against each other in a race to save lives and stop a threat and crack a conspiracy all along the way. The goal of the operation was, of course, to be.

fun and to teach people some new skills, but it was also designed to be very, very challenging. Not only did competitors have to operate in a nearly non-stop ongoing scenario that lasted 48 hours, but they also had to choose when they would share information with each other and when they would not share information. And then I also had many new spy skills that I was throwing at them to see them wrestle through and learn and master those spy skills along the way. So it was a situation where it was something that we in the intel world called task saturation, and I'll be able to teach you more about task saturation a different day. But the goal was to basically challenge folks mentally and physically in a virtual setting over that Thanksgiving weekend.

Now, I had 24 people sign up to start Operation Real Time conspiracy. It only lasted 48 hours. and by the end of 48 hours I only had 14 finish. That means that the other 10 either dropped out or they couldn't keep up with the original group. Of the 14 that finished, only one person had the highest score and went on to win the game and win my prize package. But even that one person who took the crown as the winner

was shocked when he won, because over the course of the game, he had made several mistakes that he thought flunked him, that he thought he would never be able to bounce back from. Now, that experience, that winner specifically, leads me to the topic I want to talk about today, and I want to talk about the concept of failure. You see, everybody out there from teachers to therapists has an opinion about failure. So I'm not interested today in sharing opinions. I'm interested in sharing facts. Facts that CIA gave me and facts that I have seen work in the field and in my own everyday life. When you look at the word failure, failure is defined as the

absence of success. Now most dime store bloggers and self-help gurus and internet influencers like to chide this definition, they make fun of this definition, and then they go into long diatribes about goals and dreams and hopes and purpose and how all of these things offset this risk of failure. You hear things like fail forward or fail fast or fail cheap. The definition, the absence of success, the definition of failure to me is exactly what it's supposed to be. And that definition is what every operator at CIA will tell you was drilled into them from the day they signed on for one simple reason. When you consider that failure is the absence of success, it puts all of the focus,

all of the value. The entire meaning of the word failure hinges on the word success. It does not hinge on the word failure. Let me say that again. When failure is defined as the absence of success, then by definition, failure itself has no form. It has no substance. It is only the absence of something else. It's like the word dark.

Dark is just the absence of light. Or the word white. White is just the absence of color. As soon as you have light in the dark, it's no longer dark. As soon as you have color in something that's white, it's no longer white. And as soon as you have success in the absence of success, then you no longer have failure. to field operatives who go out there and risk everything in the field, it is imperative that you keep your focus on success.

You don't even consider failure as a possibility. Now, when I tell most people this idea, that failure is not an option, failure is not a possibility that comes through our mind, someone will always look at me and say, Andy, come on, how is that even possible? How can you honestly say that failure is not a possibility? It's not an option.

And I want to tell you exactly how it breaks down when real risk and real gain is involved. You see, success in the field is defined by objectives. It's not defined by wishes or hopes or dreams or purpose or all the other woohoo-y stuff that you get from blogs and self-help masters, right? It's defined by clear objectives. And every objective that we set is feasible. A feasible objective, like disarming a bomb or picking a lock or hacking a main. frame or taking down a terrorist. These are feasible specific objectives. And that means that success in that objective is both defined and feasible. But having defined feasible success is only the first part,

right? Anybody can set an objective, anybody can make sure that objective is feasible, anybody can define any objective they choose. The challenge comes when you actually have to execute the mission. When you execute, you execute against the objectives that you set, not some fluffy dream or ideal. And then when you complete an objective, you have tangible success. Do you see how that works? You set an objective, you might have several objectives. As soon as you complete an objective, you have success. It's that easy. But it's also a little bit more than that, right? Because what happens when you miss an objective? Right? When you miss an objective, doesn't that technically mean you have the absence of success? And if you have the absence of success, doesn't that technically mean that you have failed? And the answer to that question is no. Because missing an objective once, missing an objective twice or four times is not a permanent state. When you miss an objective, it's only temporary because you can always go back and continue to.

attempt to achieve that objective. In the world of espionage operations, elite military units, siggint units, Mazant units, we all go back and try again and again until every required objective that we set is either complete or deemed obsolete. The only way to fail a mission in the field is to quit, to give up, to stop trying, And we know that. And that is why failure is not an option. Because it means that the only way to fail is to quit or to give up.

And we're never going to quit. We're never going to give up. Because when you stop trying, you make the absence of success a permanent state. It all boils down to whether or not you try or don't try. Then that means that failure is not a definition. It's not a substance. It's a choice. It's not an outcome.

It's something you have control over. Let me give another example, right? And I want to give you an example from my own everyday life. My son, Sina, didn't start reading on his own until he was nearly seven years old. Now, if you're listening to this podcast in real time, he's seven years old now. So for the last six years, he hasn't really been reading. But my wife, Ghi, started trying to teach him how to read early when he was four. Her mom started guilting us to teach him even before that, because she used to swear up and down that Ghi was reading classic novels by age five. So for nearly three full years, from four

until seven, my wife, Ghi kept working with my son Sina, drilling letters, drilling sight words, drilling phonics, you name it. If you have a child, if you have had a child, you know exactly what this looks like, this focused, intense period of time where you don't have to worry about potty training anymore, and you become obsessed with whether or not they're going to read. But no matter how hard he was drilled, no matter how much we worked on him with books, it never seemed to stick. He loved it when we would read to him, but if we ever asked him to read to us, it always ended in this awkward blank stare. And my wife felt like she was failing. Even after all of her CIA training, even after her own field experience, missing the objective of teaching

our son how to read for years, for three years, can feel so discouraging that you start to feel like you are failing. But what did we just talk about? We just talked about the fact that failure is a choice. Failure is the absence of success becoming permanent. She kept trying. And she tried and she tried. And that is why it was never actually failure. And then when we were living in Abu Dhabi last year, something clicked. My youngest sister, who is a full-blown adult herself right now, was staying with us and she is an avid reader all by herself. Well, one day my son started waking up early, and then he would go into his aunt's room, and he would find her sitting on her bed, reading her books in the quiet, in the quiet and in the morning light. In the desert,

the morning is so insanely bright, it's not really pleasant, but my sister, loved it because she could read, and then before we knew what was going on, my son was sitting next to her, reading with her. Not letting her read to him. My sister would sit on one part of the bed, reading her own book. My son would sit also on her bed right beside her, reading his own book. We would even find him reading out loud to her. Just like that, he was reading. Just like that, there was success. And one, Once there was success, then there could never be failure, because failure is defined as the absence of success. So in the years before, when my wife was struggling and she was not having the success that she wanted to have, she was never failing because it was an ongoing mission. This is how it works for us.

Some of our missions last for hours. Some of our missions last for years. As long as you continue to strive towards a final outcome, you strive towards the goal, you can never really say that you're failing. It's only when you stop striving. When you stop the efforts and you give up, that is when failure actually occurs. The only way that we could have failed our son would be to have given up on his learning, given up on our hopes that he would ever learn to read. If we had given up, he would have never been sitting on that bed next to my sister. He would have never ended up reading in Abu Dhabi.

He would have ended up reading who knows when, who knows where, who knows how. CIA drills you to see failure as a choice. It does it all the time. It drills you in operations. It drills you in training. It drills you as a culture to see failure as a choice, not as an outcome. That is why failure is never an option. Because if you never give up, no matter how long it takes,

you will never fail. So whatever it is that you're striving for now, whether it's some New Year's resolution, whether it's for a new job, or whether it's for a new life, whether it's for a new family, whether it's for a new opportunity, whatever you're striving for,

you haven't failed yet. Even if everyone's sitting around you, looks at you and thinks that you failed, if people call you a failure, if you go to bed at night thinking that you've already failed, if it is still alive in you as an objective, and you are still working towards it, you haven't failed yet. Failure is a choice.

It is not an outcome. So having not achieved your success yet doesn't mean that you have already failed. You are just in the middle of an ongoing operation. And that is everyday espionage. Everyday espionage is dedicated to one thing. educating everyday people. I know that not everyone will listen, but those who listen will learn. If you learned something new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend.

Find me on social media at Everyday Spy or on my website, Everydayspy.com. If you are up for a special challenge, visit Everydayspy.com forward slash operations and join me for an authentic spy training mission. And above all else, remember that knowledge is freedom.