What is the Try-Fail Cycle? How Struggle Makes You Stronger – Transcript

00:00 – Introduction: What Is the Try-Fail Cycle in the Hero’s Journey?

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Brent: A try-fail cycle is where a hero is required to make several attempts to overcome a specific challenge in the story. Some attempts are partially successful, taking them closer to their goal. Some attempts are total failures, making the situation even worse. In the story of your life, try-fail cycles will test your resilience, but they’ll also build your capacity. In this episode with Camille Diggs, we look at how to recognize a tri-fail cycle, how to face the tri-fail cycles in our own life, and the disappointing illusion of instant success. I’m Brent Diggs, and this is Full Mental Bracket, where science and storytelling meet to help you level up and tell a better story with your life.

Brent: Good time period, Bracketeers. We’re coming at you today with another episode. Joining me in the stunt host chair is Camille Diggs, and today we’re gonna talk about try-fail cycles.

Camille: Ooh, I know this one.

Brent: You do? Tell us about it.

Camille: I do. This is where you put your laundry in the washer, and then you forget about it and it goes sour. And then you have to wash it again. And then after you wash it again, you put it in the dryer, but then you forget about in the dryer and then your clothes get wrinkled. So then you have to dry it again. But I have come up with a amazing product.

Brent: You have solved the tri-fail cycle?

Camille: I have solved the tri-fail cycle. Yes, we are gonna make billions off of this idea.

Brent: You heard it here first. What is it, what is it?

Camille: It is instant success, dryer sheets.

Brent: Wow, I want to congratulate you because that is 100% the wrong answer. But good try. Bless your heart.

Camille: No, I got the bless your heart, oh no.

Brent: In the South, bless your heart.

Camille: No, I got the bless your South.

Brent: Oh my goodness, yes. Bracketeers, try fail cycles, T with a try. I mean, sometimes you have a dry fail cycle and you meet those people and they smell sour and you’re like, bless your heart, you don’t have a wife or a girlfriend or anyone who’s actually paying attention to your clothes. Because they stanky. They stanky.

Camille: Oh my goodness gracious.

Brent: But yeah, the tri-fail cycles is a writing term and it’s one that I stole from another podcast.

Camille: You thievin’ thiever.

Brent: I did, but I’m giving credit.

Camille: There you go.

Brent: I was listening to the Writing Excuses podcast a few years back when I was trying to write a novel and they mentioned Dan Wells as well as Brandon Sanderson. Anytime you take advice from Brandon Sanderson, you’re no slouch.

Camille: Oh, okay.

Brent: If you’re gonna steal, you should steal from the people who’ve sold it.

Camille: No slouching.

Brent: No slouching, yeah. If you’re gonna steal, steal from people that have sold a bazillion books.

Camille: Oh. Okay.

Brent: Then you feel good about it. Anyway, and also Mary Robinette Kowals on there and Howard Taylor, a bunch of cool writing people are on the show, but their idea was the try-fail cycle. They talk about how to make your stories more interesting by giving your characters struggles.

Camille: So the laundry struggle, which is real by the way, doesn’t count.

Brent: No, and the thing, the difference between writing and real life is real life already comes with struggles. Oftentimes we don’t have to add, we don’t have to supplement. Here’s my bonus struggles. Go to the store and get a Sam’s Club family size bag of struggle.

Camille: Six pack, six pack of struggles.

Brent: I mean, if you’re anything like our house, it just comes. You wake up and like, oh look, struggle, you’re waiting for me again. How convenient.

Brent: But the idea in a story is that if a story’s too easy…

Camille: Wait, how do you get to the Sam’s Club to get the packet of Struggles? On the Struggle Bus!

Brent: On the struggle bus. But if you already have your leftovers from last bag, you may not actually make it to the store, because you already have plenty of Struggles.

Camille: That’s true.

Brent: So maybe they just deliver. I mean, if it’s like our house, they’re being delivered.

Camille: Oh yeah, that’s true. Sam’s Club’s always delivered too, yeah.

Brent: Ding dong, what’s this? Oh no, take it back. I didn’t order this. I want a refund. Oh man. So a story without struggle, although a life without struggle sounds good, a story without struggle is kind of boring.

Camille: It is. It is. I’ve never watched a good movie or read a good story that the main character doesn’t overcome something.

Brent: You were telling me about the cartoons, the little cartoons, the how it should have ended animated videos.

Camille: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So in Lord of the Rings, instead of them going through that whole entire saga and trip, if they would have just let the bird drop the ring in the mountain, they could have just flown it there and then dropped it in the mountain and the story would have been done.

Brent: Had a short little video with the eagles and they dropped the ring into the volcano from high altitude and like, man, that was easy. Can you imagine having to walk that whole way? Could have taken years.

Camille: Exactly. Exactly. That would have been great.

Brent: That would have been great. That would have been an easier story, but it wouldn’t have been a better story. No one would have read that story ever or again or more than once. Whereas the Lord of the Rings, I personally have read it several times because it’s, Although sometimes, spoiler, the books are really thick, and so reading the books themselves is kind of a try-fail cycle. It’s like, I don’t know if I can handle another paragraph-long lecture. But they’re still good.

Brent: So the thing about a good story and a good life is that the main character never succeeds the first time at bat. There’s always struggles. You’re always trying, you’re trying, you’re failing, you’re succeeding partially.

Camille: Right, right. You have small successes before the main success.

Brent: Yeah. And it takes a while.

Camille: If they always fail, even if they ultimately get success, if they always fail, it still doesn’t feel like a good story.

Brent: No. And that’s the thing. The try-fail cycle is it helps you, in a character, in a story, it helps you empathize with the character. Because, so here’s the thing. In any scene, the question in the scene is, will the character get what they want? So, one answer is yes, but once you get the answer yes, the story’s over. Once the character gets what they want, not only is that scene over, the entire story’s over. They lived happily ever after, they got their bag of gold, they made it home from the dark woods, the story’s over. So, throughout these scenes, they get closer, sometimes they get closer, sometimes they get farther away. So, two answers in a good story, in good scenes are, Yes, but, and no, and. Did they get what they want? Yes, but not entirely. And then did they get what they want? No, and in fact, they made it worse, way worse. This also sounds like our struggle stories here.

Camille: I can relate to that. I can totally relate to that one.

Brent: All right, so let’s think about the – what’s a good story? Princess Bride.

Camille: We love the Princess Bride.

Brent: We do. We have an episode on Princess Bride.

Camille: It’s an entire episode about it, yes.

Brent: And Growth Mindset, which ties very closely to this one.

Camille: Yes, it does.

Brent: So one of the great stories in the Princess Bride is Inigo Montoya.

Camille: Yes.

Brent: So Inigo Montoya…

Camille: He has a lot of no ands.

Brent: Yes, yes.

Camille: But.

Brent: Yes, but. No, but, yes. He has a lot of tries and fails.

Camille: Yes, he does.

Brent: As do we all.

Camille: Yes.

Brent: So he has trained his whole life. He’s trained his whole life in fencing. He searched his whole life for the six fingered man who killed his father. This is his whole goal in life is to find this guy and return the favor.

Camille: Yes.

Brent: 20 years of searching for the six fingered man.

Camille: Long time.

Brent: And then, in the castle, while they’re trying to rescue Buttercup, who does he find? Count Rugen, the six-fingered man. So, does he succeed? Yes, but. So, he defeats Count Rugen’s henchmen, but the Count himself runs away and locks the door. So, yes, but. So then Inigo…

Camille: He’s very, very cowardly.

Brent: Yes, Inigo calls his friend Fezzik, the brute squad, has him knock down the door. So then, Inigo chases after him. Does he succeed? No. No, and not only does he not defeat the count, he takes a flying knife to the guts.

Camille: Yeah.

Brent: Which is very painful.

Camille: Very painful.

Brent: I’m told.

Camille: Yeah, I’m told too.

Brent: I haven’t been knife gutted, but I’m told that’s the worst way.

Camille: Yeah.

Brent: So he doesn’t defeat Count Rugen. And then we’re also in shock. They’re like, what the crap story is this? Why is our good guy getting stabbed?

Camille: Yeah, multiple times, not only in the gut, but then on each shoulder.

Brent: Yes, and then the Count is very empathetic. He says, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.

Camille: Saddest thing.

Brent: How marvelous. And if he can write them himself so much the better.

Camille: Yeah. You really want him to get his even more so at this point.

Brent: So Inigo falls to the ground cause he stabbed in the gut. Does he get back up? Does he, does he move forward? Yes. He gets back up. He’s back in the fight. It’s a yes, but he’s back in the fight, but then he gets stabbed in both arms.

Camille: Yeah. But then… I just don’t understand. If you have enough energy to get back up and start fighting him again later, why didn’t you have enough energy to deflect so you didn’t get stabbed in both arms?

Brent: We are going to not cast judgment on flinging knives, seeing that we have no experience in giving or receiving of flung cutlery.

Camille: Ok. Go ahead.

Brent: You’re good, Judge. You’re on ESPN knife-throwing. Ah, that’s a bad season for him. He’s not gonna. All right, so Inigo gets up, and he goes into Terminator mode. Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. He’s unstoppable. He can’t be bargained with. He can’t be reasoned with. And he just keeps going forward until he defeats the Count, and he gets his lifelong quest for revenge. which is a little disappointing in a lifelong quest, but it’s a satisfying scene because he has five different failures just in that one scene. So what five try fails does Inigo have? Well, I’ll tell you. So he finds the count and defeats his henchman, but the count runs away.

Camille: It’s true.

Brent: So he gets through the locked door, catches the count again, but takes a knife to the guts. Well, gets back up, back in the fight, then gets stabbed twice.

Camille: Correct.

Brent: So that’s four or five fails right there. That’s a lot of fails.

Camille: Yes.

Brent: And so, but he does, overcome. And then he gets back on the fencing horse, the fence horse, the horse fence.

Camille: And this is, this is just in the last scene, just in the last scene before he actually succeeds. Because he had multiple try fails in that 20 years when he was getting, leading up to that point.

Brent: A lot. Once the movie starts, he keeps getting defeated by Wesley. Knocked out and stuff and it’s like, wow, this is just not going like it’s supposed to.

Camille: That’s right.

Brent: So once again, the try-fail cycle is a great technique in a story to build interest and make it seem, make you empathize with your character. But how we apply it in the real world life is by realizing that our struggles are not some form of arbitrary punishment. And I speak from experience. Sometimes I feel like life is literally out to get me. It’s like, why do I have so many struggles?

Camille: Right. We say, it’s not fair, it’s not fair all the time.

Brent: My story should be easier. But then an easy story is not memorable. And it’s not helpful to other people.

Camille: Well, it doesn’t help you learn anything or grow as a person either.

Brent: That’s true. Yeah. Because we’re going right into growth mindset. You know, I was thinking about an easy story. It’s like, and then… After three minutes of waiting, the microwave beeped and I got my popcorn. And it’s like a… And then, you know, people throwing flowers at him like, oh, that was the best story ever. It’s like, no, that was the boringest story ever. There was no struggle. There was no difficulty. You didn’t try. You’re just like, yeah.

Camille: Now if you had actually planted the corn yourself, harvested the corn yourself, prepared it for making the popcorn…

Brent: I feel like there’s somebody on Instagram that’s doing all this right now.

Camille: Yeah, I mean, for sure. And then… And then you finally microwave it.

Brent: Yes.

Camille: Then you’ve done all this effort into this popcorn. Then yes, you would. Yay, we got the popcorn.

Brent: Yeah, there could be like pests to eat the corn. There’s a trifail cycle. We were going to go harvest it and then the thunderstorm came in.

Camille: That’s right. So don’t, you know, don’t make fun of those people that are really excited after their three minutes of popcorn.

Brent: Okay. So there you go. So, but when you think about a try-fail cycle in your own life, you realize that struggle is a required ingredient in every great story.

Camille: That’s, that’s true. And recently I saw something online about the fact that dopamine, which normally we, we think of dopamine, getting a hit of dopamine is something that happens when we succeed or we get something that we want. And they’ve actually done some research into the fact that there is a type of dopamine that you get when you fail and that encourages you to keep going. So I looked on Psychology Today and the title of the article was Failing Forward, Unlocking the Power of Dopamine for Success.

Brent: Okay. Instant success. It’s the old fashioned, harvest your own success.

Camille: Yes. So there is a type one dopamine that we all know about, we’re familiar with, um, neuron that, um, that, uh, has that you get the hit after you get a reward and you’re feeling, you know, you’re feeling really good. Um, and then there’s a type two that you have this increase of dopamine after a dissing disappointing outcome, but it promotes you to try again.

Brent: I like it. So it’s like a fixed mindset and growth mindset type of dopamine. Nice into the mindset.

Camille: Yes. So your ability to cope with the absence of expected rewards is essential for motivation and resilience.

Brent: I agree. I agree. We have struggles in our house sometimes. Sometimes some of us that live here are more easily discouraged than others. Others of us are superheroes of perseverance.

Camille: Well. I think we just have a different way of looking at things. I have…I’ve always been the type of person that if I think that I can succeed and I start the try process, then I want to keep going until I actually succeed. Um, you know, sometimes I even have a very like tunnel vision about it. Like, don’t, don’t, don’t distract me. Don’t distract me. Don’t distract me because I’ve got it

Brent: down or, you know, no, let’s…

Camille: We got to finish it. We got to do this.

Camille: We got to keep going. We got to finish this. I’ve got, I’ve got to have this, this, this project

Brent: Ambulances are standing by so you could finish.

Camille: Yes. But you know, sometimes some people, they are more resilient to continuing the process and getting to that success.

Brent: Yes. Some people, just stop and pat yourself on the back right there. Some people, not naming any names, but it’s me. All right, that’s great. So the thing that’s helped me is that in thinking about the whole, and maybe it’s my type two dopamine or whatever, I don’t know, or until it kicks in, something that’s helped me is realize that the adversity and the struggle in my story, not only are they required steps for a great story, they’re teachers that help us grow and improve. You know, they help us transform into the person who can actually solve the problem of the story. Without the trifle cycles, you don’t grow, you don’t learn. The whole point of the story is transformation.

Camille: And I think we did talk about that to when we were talking about the Princess Bride and how the prince doesn’t ever, you know, he doesn’t grow as a person because he doesn’t really have, you know, he has all the people around the, all the yes men saying yes, yes, yes, whatever you say, whatever you say, whatever you say. So he doesn’t really have to fail. So he doesn’t, he doesn’t learn or grow as a person because he never has to fail.

Brent: Yeah, you could call that like the Humperdinck syndrome. It’s like if you’ve never, if you’ve never taken any risks, if you’ve coasted on your prestige or daddy’s money or your title, or you just never left the comfort zone or anything, then you never build this. When a struggle, when you finally do find a struggle, you’re completely unprepared for it since you’ve never faced struggle before.

Camille: It’s also kind of like when you’re saving up money for something, when you have something that you have to wait for, then it seems like it means more than if it was just handed to you.

Brent: Yeah, I mean, I’m not really great with delayed gratification, but there is definitely, as I study more and do more research, there’s just over and over again, it’s the process that satisfies, not the end goal. The end goal is a nice little thing, but, you know, like, oh yeah, we did it, we made it, we got 10,000 of this, or we got the promotion. But if you’re not enjoying the process, that’s where all the satisfaction comes by.

Camille: And that’s where you grow with other people too. You, you, you, you go through a struggle with someone and then you grow closer together. If everything is always easy, you might not have that same growth together as married couples or at work or with your family. It’s the struggles that create memory and help you to grow closer to one another.

Brent: That’s a good point. Because we talk about the social wealth of having strong social connections, relational wealth, social wealth. And, you know, without struggle sometimes you don’t lean into your tribe. Sometimes you start, struggle-free life feels more independent.

Camille: Well, there’s certain memories that we have from times with our kids.

Brent: That’s true.

Camille: When we’ve gone through hard times, struggles, and then we’ve had the success, then we really, are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Brent: If it involves inner tubes and who needs to map out the river, I’m sure it’ll all wash out fine.

Camille: Yes, I was.

Brent: Right, okay.

Camille: Exactly.

Brent: Well, traumatizing your kids 101. Hey baby, just drop us off, me and the kids, four people, two inner tubes, we’ll be fine. This river will drift past the campground. It’s not like there’s going to be a huge concrete dam and wild dogs. Being cut open by sharp rocks and Yeah, actually it was all those things. No cell phones. It’s like she doesn’t know where we are. We don’t know where she is. We’re just come on kids We’re just gonna follow this river all the way to the campground. And we and then the river then it was like only two inches deep. I’m like, it’s got to get deeper so we can drift Nope, we carried them inner tubes after that first like that first little three quarters of a mile, we were carrying that the whole rest.

Camille: Yes. Yes.

Brent: Yes.

Camille: But it did. It did.

Brent: It bonded us together.

Camille: It did. And when you finally got to the campground, you were ever so thankful to be there.

Brent: Someone was ready to go home. Like, I’ve been waiting to go home. And then like, everyone’s all sunburned and like, I’ll save that. We’ll pocket this conversation. Everyone’s not going to snap and go crazy.

Camille: There you go.

Brent: And then sunburned. A long sunburned drive all the way home.

Camille: Oh, man.

Brent: So you were thinking about that, too.

Camille: Yes, I was.

Brent: I’d hoped you’d forgotten about that.

Camille: Nope. Nope. That’s it. That’s a core memory for us and our kids, I’m sure.

Brent: All right. So building a satisfying life requires us sometimes to push through the negative feelings, because often, you know, it’s not the problems themselves and the struggles, it’s the emotions that come with them, the discouragement and the depression. And it’s just like, this is never going to take.

Camille: Yeah, sometimes your feelings are going to lie to you and you have to talk to your feelings and tell them no..

Brent: Not my feelings. My feelings are very honest. Especially when they tell me that trash doesn’t need to be taken out. Who needs to go to work? That’s crazy talk. All right, you might have a point. So another point to remember as we’re kind of wrapping this up is that your feelings are the result of your interpretations of situations. Like when you hit a struggle, if you see the struggle, if you see that you’re working and you’re growing and this is how you work out and get better, then you’re going to deal with that. From that interpretation, you’re going to have better emotions and better responses than if you interpret that as life hates you and everything always goes wrong for you. And here it goes again, more and more struggles. Sam’s club delivered again. But both are true. I mean, if you think about this, if you’re out there, you can focus on the idea that, oh my gosh, I’m in over my head, or you can focus on the idea I’m learning to swim. And often they’re both true. It just depends on which one, which interpretation you’re leaning into.

Camille: As long as you’re not learning how to swim in hurricane Camille.

Brent: I don’t recommend learning how to swim in a hurricane. You need to pick your battles. Slow incremental growth.

Camille: There you go.

Brent: But even in that slow incremental growth, you’re like, oh my gosh, the water’s deep. What am I doing here? Hopefully the winds are not blowing. Hopefully I didn’t convince you to go on an inner tube trip.

Camille: There you go.

Brent: Hopefully. All right. So we have some takeaways for you today. So questions to think about, And, here after everything we’ve talked about.

Camille: Yeah, are there areas in your life where you’re expecting quick success, and is that realistic?

Brent: I mean, think about it. What might these struggles be teaching you?

Camille: Ooh, that’s a good one. We need good lessons like that. In what ways could your challenging story help someone else more than an easy, struggle-free story?

Brent: I mean, we talk about that in coming back from the hero’s journey and building your legacy, that you have, your struggles have built wisdom and counsel that you can give to other people.

Camille: That’s right. That’s right. You can, what you’ve gone through, you can now share and support somebody else who’s going through that same struggle.

Brent: You’re in the Humperdinck syndrome. Not only can you not deal with your own struggles, you can’t help other people with their struggles because you’ve never learned.

Camille: There you go.

Brent: So that’s all we have for you in this episode. Be sure to tune in soon because we have so many more episodes coming your way good stuff. Thanks you and goodbye.

Camille: Goodbye.

Announcer: Full Mental Bracket podcast hosted by Brent Diggs. Logo by Colby Osborne. Music by Steven Adkinsson. Learn more at FullMentalBracket.com. This is the Full Mental Bracket.

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