The Failure-Success Symmetry Principle
Great failure and great success are psychologically identical dislocations
The Failure-Success Symmetry Principle reveals that your subconscious processes great failure and great success in exactly the same way. For most of your life, you exist in the normal middle of the chain of human experience, where everything is reassuring and regular. Failure catapults you abruptly into the blinding darkness of disappointment, while success catapults you equally far into the blinding glare of fame and recognition. One is objectively bad and the other objectively good, but your subconscious is completely incapable of distinguishing between them. It can only feel the absolute value of the emotional equation -- the exact distance you have been flung from yourself. Both extremes carry equal danger of getting lost in the psychological hinterlands, and both require the same remedy: finding your way back to your center as quickly as possible. Elizabeth Gilbert experienced this firsthand when the global success of Eat Pray Love left her feeling identical to the unpublished waitress she had been during years of rejection. The principle is profoundly liberating because it means you do not need different strategies for handling success versus failure -- you need one strategy for handling dislocation from your center, and that strategy is always to go home.
- Your subconscious cannot distinguish between great success and great failure
- It only registers the absolute distance you have been flung from your normal center
- Both extremes carry equal danger of psychological dislocation and lost identity
- The remedy for both is identical: return to your center as swiftly as possible
- You do not need separate strategies for failure and success -- you need one strategy for dislocation
- Recognize the Dislocation SignalLearn to recognize when you have been catapulted from your center by an extreme outcome, whether positive or negative. The signals are similar in both cases: confusion about your identity, difficulty concentrating on normal work, obsessive rumination about the event, feeling like a different person than you were before, and a sense that your old life no longer fits. These signals indicate dislocation, not character change. You have not become a new person; you have been flung far from yourself and need to find your way back.Pro tipThe most dangerous dislocation is success-driven because nobody around you validates the disorientation -- they expect you to be thrilled.WarningSuccess-driven dislocation is often misdiagnosed as ingratitude or impostor syndrome when it is actually a normal neurological response to extreme change.
- Apply the Absolute Value TestWhen disoriented by any extreme outcome, ask yourself: how far am I from my normal center? Not which direction -- how far. This reframing reveals that the anxiety of massive success and the despair of massive failure are the same emotion wearing different masks. Once you see they are equivalent, you realize you already have the coping tools from past failures that will work for current successes, and vice versa. The test strips away the false distinction between positive and negative extremes and reveals them as identical challenges.Pro tipWrite down how you felt during your worst failure and how you feel during your biggest success. The emotional descriptions will be surprisingly similar.
- Execute the Single RemedyReturn to your home -- the work or practice you love more than yourself -- using the exact same approach regardless of which extreme dislocated you. Put your head down, show up with diligence and devotion, and perform the next task that your craft demands. Gilbert used the same approach after years of rejection letters and after Eat Pray Love: get back to writing. The dislocation heals through devoted action, not through analysis or time or external validation.Pro tipThe speed of your return matters. The longer you stay dislocated, the harder it becomes to find your way back. Move quickly.
After Eat Pray Love's massive success, Gilbert found herself constantly thinking about the unpublished diner waitress she used to be. Their lives could not have been more different, yet she felt like the same person. This made no rational sense until she understood that both extremes had flung her the same psychological distance from her center -- they were mirror images of the same dislocation.
Gilbert published her follow-up to Eat Pray Love in 2010 and it bombed commercially. But instead of devastation, she felt bulletproof. She had broken the spell of success-driven dislocation by returning home to writing for its own sake. The bombing confirmed that she was safe from the hurricanes of outcome because her identity was no longer tied to results.
Gilbert noticed something irrational: after achieving success beyond her wildest expectations with Eat Pray Love, she felt identical to the struggling rejected writer she had been for six years. She could not understand why a woman at the top of the bestseller lists would identify so strongly with a woman at the bottom of a stack of rejection letters. The answer came when she realized that both extremes had the same psychological signature -- they both flung her far from her normal sense of self. The direction did not matter; only the distance did. This insight resolved what had seemed like a paradox and revealed that the same coping mechanism that had sustained her through failure -- returning to devoted practice -- would also sustain her through success.