A frugal failure

When it rains, of course it pours. This week, however, it’s is raining failure and I love every bit of it.

OK, not literally dancing on top of the people that fail but you get what I mean. Right?

Yesterday, I wrote about failure as a required step for success. Just hours after posting my thoughts, Google Reader fired up another new post by Penelope Trunk that continues the failure streak.

And, Just a couple days after writing about time being the necessary factor in becoming an expert at something, Trunk writes yesterday about the need to be frugal in order to achieve success:

So I guess what I’m saying is that being an expert in something requires frugality. It’s not just a spending frugality. It’s a focus frugality. It’s the recognition that spending money is actually a distraction from the passion at hand. So the less you spend, the less you’re distracted.

Even though she stops short of calling it out by name, the bigger point for me is sacrifice. Filling in “sacrifice” for “frugality” you can see what Trunk is getting at: getting what you are after requires risky choices that may or may not pay off in the end.

Read also: In order to win something, you will probably have to lose something.

So, yes, it really does point back to failure. Andre Agassi gave up his childhood to swing a tennis racquet two million times before he won his first slam. Wilco had to give up their recording contract to release the album that made them famous. The list goes on and on.

Yesterday, I asked myself what I want so much that I would be willing to fail before getting it. Well, today I’m asking a similar question: What do I want so much that I would sacrifice nearly anything to get it?

Still no answer.