Step 9: Failure is part of success. Shoot for perfection and you’ll have no regrets.
Achieving something wonderful means continuing to push past failure.
You will fail at some point in creating your SAT prep habit. Being okay with failure means that, even when something isn’t perfect, you keep going with your habit.
This is the last post in our 9 Steps to Forming an SAT habit series.

Step 9: When you’re studying for the SATs, expect to fail sometimes - it’s part of success!

I have a friend whose boyfriend is a 23-year-old named Azad. When Azad talks on the phone, he speaks with the authority of a mid-career businessperson - as if he’s mid-40s. I asked my friend where he learned to address folks with such security at such a young age, when so many of us are struggling with our self-confidence and imposter syndrome! Authority is hard to pull off for fully grown people, but this young man is just starting out in his career! My friend said, “His first job was political campaigning - knocking on doors. Most of the time people slammed doors in his face, and the rest of the time they just said ’no.’ When you’ve heard the word ‘no’ a million times, it just doesn’t bother you anymore.”

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Failure just doesn’t bother you anymore.

The prospect of not being bothered by failure is probably foreign to most of us; no one LIKES to fail. We will go out of our way to avoid messing up whenever possible, because it’s not fun to fail, and it’s often humiliating.

90% of restaurants fail in their first year.

So why do people keep starting restaurants? It’s a well-known fact inside and outside the industry.

Even though the odds are against them, folks want to pursue their dreams. Why? Because the possibility of achieving what you’ve dreamed about is worth risking the almost-certainty that you won’t make it. As a former opera singer, I know that well. Everyone I encountered along the way told me that I’d never make it, but I persevered regardless - because the possibility of making it meant a lifestyle that I dreamed about - that felt perfect to me.

I was willing to shoot for perfection and miss - trying was worth it, not just because of the potential payoff, but because what I knew “failing” might be.

Norman Vincent Peale said: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.” This might seem like a banal platitude, but the point is that if you pursue perfection knowing you’ll fall short, the outcome that DOES befall you will still be pretty great.

Have no regrets.

My drama teacher Peggy used to say, “If you’re going to fail, fail big.” She knew that if you go all out, you’ll have no regrets - and that same secondary outcome that Norman Vincent Peale cites, “landing among the stars,” will be pretty amazing.

If you can do it, you should do it - you owe it to yourself.

The quote under my picture in my high school yearbook was, “What a person CAN do, a person SHOULD do.” Sometimes you meet people who are just so freaking talented that they make the rest of us pale in comparison. Those people should try - because they are so gifted that they have the ability to do something far greater, more beautiful, more complicated, and more brilliant, and, by doing whatever they have that capacity for SO WELL, they can usher us into a new space.

You know that figure skaters now routinely do quadruple toe loops. The toe loop (the single!) was invented in 1920; figure skaters kept working on it and finally, in 1988 and 2018 (for men and women respectively), the quadruple toe loop was executed. Think of all those people who tried doing a double toe loop when only the single existed - and how many of them must have fallen and failed before the double toe loop became accepted and expected.

“Are you one of those people who is so gifted that you push the envelope?”

That question always makes me think twice about inaction and complacency.

So expect to fail - it’s okay. Trying is the only way we ever get anything wonderful. Thomas Edison - a pretty cool dude - said, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

The most important part of being on the path to invent something wonderful? Every time you fall, make sure you get up again. That’s resilience - that’s grit. And if you haven’t watched Angela Duckworth’s TED Talk, you should watch it below.

At the end of the day, this all boils down to creating a consistent stream of internal motivation.

Most of us want different things than those things which are happening in our lives, but it takes a lot of effort to get there. The difference between folks who get what they want and folks who don’t is NOT GIVING UP. EVERY DAY. Slow and steady wins the race. Think of how many aphorisms - little nuggets of wisdom - exist in the world to remind us of this same maxim. It’s because it’s true!

So this is the final day of the “9 steps to forming a good SAT prep habit” because I want you to know that you WILL FAIL.

At some point, something won’t make sense and you won’t be able to understand it. But you’ll keep plugging away at it. Watch some videos about how to solve it, ask a teacher or an older sibling, and finally someone will say something that helps you make sense of it.

At some point you’ll have an off day. It’s okay. But you’ll keep going the next day. And the next day. And you’ll know that “failing” one day doesn’t mean you’ll fail the next - it just means that you didn’t understand something that particular day.

Being okay with failure means that, when something isn’t perfect, you keep going with your habit. The habit is the way to familiarity - so that challenges on the SAT feel familiar. The test feels familiar. The layout feels familiar. The concepts feel familiar.