You Need to FAIL to WIN ► Dark Souls

Every time you fail, you gain knowledge and skill and experience, making you stronger for the next attempt. I want to explain to you how losses are actually wins in disguise. And I want to teach you this through the game Dark Souls. So, how can you turn your losses into wins? I have lived both mindsets. You can either choose to believe that you’ve lost when you’ve lost, or you can refuse to ever feel that you’ve lost, only

Learned. Dark Souls is a brutal game. Whether it’s your first time playing or your thousandth time playing, you’re still going to die a lot. You’ll die in stupid ways, hilarious ways, understandable ways, ways that are going to make you like need a second. like I’m going to go. I need to I need to go. But what some people might not realize is that you’re not supposed to be good at it from the start. Actually, you’re not

Even supposed to be good at it when you’ve already gotten good at it. You’re supposed to fail. Trial and error. That’s what the game is. Do it again and over and over until finally, oh my god, I finally The failure is part of the game. not something that is preventing you from enjoying it. The way I’ve always played the game is sit there and make slight progress on a boss until finally after chipping away at it, I finally get

Him down to a hair of health. And so am I. I’m on a hair of health and it’s both of us and we’re one hit. And then finally, I just I get him. I get him. And that’s how I play the game. slight progress every time but die a lot a lot of attempts. And I think that this is what Dark Souls is. If it was an easy game that you could just sit down and on your

First attempt without ever playing the game before manage to do everything just on one life, then it wouldn’t be the same game anymore. It wouldn’t be Dark Souls. That’s why I think the losses in these games are actually subtle subtle wins because when you come back to fight the boss again, you come back just a tiny bit wiser than you were before. This game teaches you to learn from your mistakes. That’s what the game is. And this

Translates to real life, too. I have this story. All right. So just the other week, we had to show our teacher a project design for our upcoming project. We had to show him just the initial design for it and get his feedback on it so that we can proceed with actually doing stuff on the devices in the network. When we went to go show our teacher our design, it’s like I was hoping that everything was okay so that

We could move on, but I was also kind of hoping that if anything was wrong, I want him to tell me right now. And I want him to tell me because if anything is wrong, I want to fix it, right? I don’t just want to leave it and build our entire project on a shitty foundation. And in this sense, it’s like good to fail, don’t you think? Because the criticism is going to allow you to actually succeed more than you would

Have without it. That’s why constructive criticism is like so important. Because if something is actually really wrong, then we should fix it. Just like we should switch up our strategy when we’re fighting the boss and we just can’t seem to beat him, right? Maybe we should switch up our strategy. It’s a good thing to fail so that you can learn from it. In the Christian Bale Batman movies, there’s this quote, “Why do we fall?” So that we can learn to pick

Ourselves up. It depends on how you look at your failures. You can look at them like they are the end, like you’ve actually been defeated, or you can look at them as a chance, an opportunity to be stronger and wiser than last time. Losing gives you an advantage on other people because you know what it’s like to lose. You know why you lost and you can handle the loss. I’ve been meditating for some time now and I’ve

Learned that when you’re trying to meditate and your eyes are closed and you can hear dogs barking, birds squawking super loud, people talking just right over here being super loud, some guy using a hammer on something, I don’t know. It sounds like he’s just knocking on a wall or just doing nothing at all. These things can all be seen as a distraction to your meditation or what I’ve learned is that they can actually just I mean they are part of the

Meditation. Those noises are not against you trying actively to prevent you from achieving peace. They’re not. They are part of the world around you. Actually, they’re part of the peace that you seek. If you can accept their presence in your meditation, then you’ll be more at peace. If you can accept the losses, not as failures, not as a plot against you to always make you lose, but as an opportunity to learn, to grow from it. I

Know it sounds cheesy, but for real though, you can look at it both ways. Why not look at it as a place to grow instead of the end? When I have been meditating, I’ve been disappointed in myself when I lose my concentration on trying to focus on my breath or focus on nothing. Right? Always some thoughts come into your mind and you don’t even realize that they’re in your mind until you’ve already been distracted. I’ve realized that just like

You’re supposed to die in Dark Souls, you’re supposed to you’re also supposed to get distracted when you’re meditating. That’s actually what meditation is. Okay. The way that Hamza explains it is every time you lose focus on what you’re trying to focus on, focus on nothing. Focus on your breath. Every time you lose that focus, it’s like an exercise for your brain to return to the focus, right? You get distracted, you return. That’s like one repetition in the gym. All right? That’s

Like doing one bicep curl. You lose and then you come back. You exercise your brain to be more resistant to these distracting thoughts. By acknowledging these thoughts and letting them pass, you learn to more easily ground yourself in the present moment, which is like the point of meditation, right? So don’t look at these distracting thoughts as distractions. They’re part of the meditation. They are going to allow you to grow. They are what are going to make

You grow in your brain. So to recap, constructive criticism is very useful, okay? Because if something is wrong, if the foundation is crappy, we want to fix that, right? And there’s no need to take it personally, let’s just be better and fix it. Another thing we talked about was just like a workout, your mind gets stronger the more that you challenge it, right? And it’s just like learning. It’s just like learning or studying anything. You challenge your brain and then your

Brain grows and it learns to deal with these kinds of math, physics, anything, anything. So don’t feel defeated when it feels like you’re losing your focus. Okay? Simply ground yourself and come back because that is actually what the point of meditation is. Don’t fight the distractions and don’t get pissed off at them because they’re actually part of the meditation. They’re part of life. They’re part of the peace that you seek. So, next time you fail, whether it’s in Dark Souls or

A different game or real life or or anything, you got to ask yourself, what can I learn from this? Right? I didn’t maybe I maybe I feel like I lost but I don’t have to feel like that. What did I learn from this? What can I learn from this? I’m curious to know. Have you guys experienced this? Have you guys been able to turn a loss into a win? Does any of this make sense what I’m talking about? Am I just off my

Rocker? Let me know in the comments. And um today I’m recording this on April 9th, 2025. And I think that’s everything I have to say. You guys take care. Okay.