I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take... — Michael Jordan

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Author: Michael Jordan

Insight: There's something almost backwards about using failure as the reason for success, but it clicks once you sit with it. Most of us think of failure as something to minimize or hide—a mark against us. Jordan's point is different: he's saying the willingness to fail repeatedly, publicly, and at crucial moments is actually what builds excellence. The person who only takes shots they're sure about never develops the skill to make the hard ones. This matters now because we're often paralyzed by the fear of being bad at something before we're good at it. We avoid the thing we actually want to learn because we can't handle the stumbling phase. But Jordan's arithmetic is revealing: those 9000 missed shots weren't obstacles to his success. They were the path to it. Each miss taught him something about angles, pressure, his own psychology. The 26 missed game-winners meant he also made some that mattered. The non-obvious part is that this doesn't mean blind optimism or careless risks. It means being willing to fail in pursuit of something real, and understanding that the quantity and quality of your attempts matters more than your immediate win rate. The person who tries more, fails more, and keeps going isn't just lucky—they've accidentally trained themselves into competence.

Source: I Can't Accept Not Trying: Michael Jordan on the Pursuit of Excellence, p. 129, 2005