Well... we clearly have different models of how most people work, then. People fail to achieve their full potential for not challenging themselves. PJEby thinks that this is due to the fear of failure leading to unhappiness and lack of self-worth, so he tries to convince people that failing is all right and doesn't make them an awful person. I worry that this means they won't try hard enough. It doesn't even ring true, to me.

So I take the route of - it's okay to take on even those challenges that provide you with genuine information about yourself, and that may even provide you with negative information. Being told that you aren't as good as you thought is, itself, not the end of the world. Being a little unhappy now and then isn't the end of the world. It's okay to throw all of yourself against a challenge. And it's okay not to make your excuses in advance - though your temptation to do so may tell you where you need improvement.

In the Matrix of the inside of your mind, you are not always strong where you believe you are strong, but you are weak where you believe you are weak. PJEby tells you that failure doesn't have to hurt. To me this seems to amount to telling people that they are weak and cannot withstand hurt; that their mental landscape has to be smoothed out into a world where nothing bad ever happens, and so they can dare anything. But what else does that smoothing lose? How much strength is that really?

I won three AI-Box experiments, then lost two. I threw all of myself into winning, and I still lost. It hurt. I survived.

Losing the stakes of yourself that you gambled - that hurts and it's okay for it to hurt, but even that is not the end of the world. You keep moving forward, afterward.

(Of course, on some occasions it IS the end of the world.)