​

With just a couple weeks left of 2025, here’s one New Year’s resolution I bet none of you have in mind: Fail more.

In conversations with conscientious, high-achieving, Type A people across the board, “failure” typically emerges as one concept that scares them all equally. They feel they’ll do anything to avoid it.

If this is sounding anything like you, I have news that should come as a great relief: there’s a simple blueprint for avoiding failure. Mind-blowingly intuitive! It’s actually the easiest-to-follow, most foolproof guide anyone could possibly fathom. And today, it’s our gift to you.

As you read through it, you might be excited to discover you’re already following at least one of the steps that guarantee you won’t EVER FAIL at anything in your life. If that’s truly what you want, here is the guaranteed formula for making your dream come true:

1. Stick with what’s familiar. Whatever you’ve done in the past has at least kept you alive, so you might as well keep doing it. Doing anything else would yield a result that isn’t fully predictable in this exact moment. And that’s scary.

2. Don’t take risks. Even calculated risks are to be avoided. There’s no amount of “intelligent” planning that can account for every possibility in life. So, it makes sense to stick with the already-proven.

3. Listen to fear! It’s there to keep you safe. When you feel it, don’t question why it’s there. Don’t waste time analyzing and dissecting it. Just trust that it will keep you out of harm’s way. And that’s what you want.

4. Overanalyze everything. Especially your so-called “intuition.” Spend hours dissecting any spark of an idea that occurs to you spontaneously. If it excites you on any level, you’ve got to be overlooking something. There’s always a potential pitfall. You just need to figure out what it is BEFORE you take action. If need be, stay up all night turning it over in your mind. More times than not, you will have talked yourself out of it by morning. And that’s probably for the best.

5. Do everything alone. Collaboration is a fool’s game. Don’t ask anyone for help. They might say no. And can you really imagine anything worse?

6. Think small. Sure, it can be fun to imagine yourself doing this or that. But ultimately, you’re fine where you are. Trying for more could introduce complication. And that sounds hard.

7. Choose friends who are equally committed to NOT failing. You’ve heard it a million times: the people you surround yourself with matter. You want to establish a support system of friends and colleagues who will keep your feet on the ground, reminding you constantly of the “practical” implications of anything you’re considering doing. This is especially true if you are the imaginative “dreamer” sort whose ways of thinking always seem to be a bit… different from the norm. If someone’s favorite concept is “realism,” you can trust they’ll have your best interest at heart. Befriend them immediately. Listen to everything they say.

Hopefully you’ve picked up on the sarcasm and enjoyed a good laugh. But in all seriousness, there might be one or two of these “steps” that, without meaning to, you’ve internalized and have been following. Personally, I’m still trying to shake numbers 4 and 5. We’ve all been there, especially those of us who have shown enough courage to dream big in the first place. The higher the stakes (and the more to lose), the greater becomes the fear of failure.

But this newsletter is a sincere invitation (from one Black Sheep to another) to start failing MORE. If you end up abandoning every other New Year’s resolution you set for 2026, hold this one close to you: Live with an intention to fail.

Because think about it: If you’re never failing, are you ever growing?

The moment you stop being afraid to fail is the moment you are free to start taking real, massive, crazy action in pursuit of your wildest dreams, as only you can.

Thank you all so much for supporting “Black Sheep Bleat.” We’ll be back with another volume in January. Until then, enjoy a beautiful holiday season and the start of a 2026 that is full of monumental growth and exceptional failures.

If you enjoyed reading this, please consider forwarding it to a friend. We truly appreciate each one of our readers and subscribers. Thank you for being here!

Here's to your success,

Not subscribed? Feed your black sheep here.

THE RUIZ GROUP
of Keller Williams Realty

Led by Pete Ruiz, REALTOR®​
DRE: 01974535