I’ve done things without the willingness and the capacity to endure failure.

This is a principle I’ve come to understand: I only learn, or I’m willing to learn, after failing. I learned how to ride a bicycle when I was 22 years old in Paris. I almost got hit by a bus. I was so panicked that a teenager saw it and revealed it to his other friends. I couldn’t imagine it was so obvious. I also learned how to swim when I was 24. Like riding a bicycle, I was scared as hell. Whenever I entered the water, I thought I would sink. In fact, every moment during my first swimming lessons, I thought I would drown. I drank so much water that day—more than I ever have in a single day.

As Ray Dalio says, failing and making mistakes is painful, but the pain is a signal that there is something for us to learn. When it came to riding a bicycle, I had to understand that I move forward by pressing oppositely on both pedals simultaneously. Understanding the role of the different parts of my body was crucial: my legs to provide the torque force required to move me forward, my hands to direct the handlebars, and my eyes to know where I am going or what might be in front of me. I learned that if I remain stationary on a bike, with both feet on the pedals, I will fall from a lack of stability. The only way to keep balance on a bike is by continuing to move, pedaling forward.

The same goes for swimming. The basic thing to understand is that the body can float on water. Since our lungs contain air, and air is 800 times less dense than water, we can float. But you can’t remain stationary in water, so you must move to prevent drowning.

However, you should make sure that failure doesn’t terminate you. For instance, I had to be mindful to not let a car hit me while practicing on a bike, starting small, and choosing to ride at times when there was less traffic, even at night. For swimming, it would have been stupid to start my lessons on the deeper part of the pool.

I have always wanted to learn. To the point where, in my childhood, I chose to remain under the bench instead of dropping out of primary school. But when I became an adult, I suffered from what most of us adults suffer from: shame of failure. In fact, we are often punished for failing. But this is not the problem. The problem is the terminal failure. The terminal  mistake, what will kick you out of the game, to paraphrase Nassim taleb.