I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. - Michael Jordan
This article is not to debate who is the GOAT (Greatest of All time) when it comes NBA players, but to highlight to one of the greatest quotes Michael Jordan has said. The aforementioned quote is part of Nike's campaign's from the 90's and it has resonated to me to this day and I wanted to deep dive a bit more and make it more analogues to real life. To dive into this analogy, let's look at the source, which is Jordan’s basketball performance, breaking down how each missed shot and lost game contributed to his journey as an athlete. Let's explore the target, representing life’s challenges and successes to understand how setbacks shape resilience and growth over time.
In the source model of Michael Jordan’s basketball performance, each aspect of his career is characterized by moments of failure that contributed to his overall growth as an athlete. Missed shots represented individual moments where his efforts did not result in the desired outcome, acting as setbacks that provided opportunities for learning and improvement.
Lost games are larger-scale failures that impact not only his personal performance but also his team’s record, carrying higher stakes and more significant consequences. At an even higher level, missed game-winning shots are high-stakes moments of trust and responsibility, where he is expected to succeed under intense pressure. These missed opportunities can be disappointing for both Jordan and his team, however they highlight the crucial role of resilience when the pressure is at its peak.
Over time, these accumulated failures—including thousands of missed shots and numerous lost games—have built a foundation of resilience, mental toughness and persistence critical for success. Each setback became a stepping stone toward mastering his craft, making his basketball journey a powerful analogy for repeated challenges and eventually achieving greatness.
In the target model of life’s challenges, individual failures are seen as valuable experiences that build personal growth and resilience. Small setbacks—like job rejections, failed relationships, or missed opportunities—are much like missed shots in basketball; each one is an isolated moment where our efforts don’t produce the desired outcome. While these moments can be disappointing, they are important lessons that shape our ability to face adversity. On a larger scale, more significant failures—such as setbacks in major projects, career obstacles, or missed personal goals—mirror the impact of lost games for Michael’s career. These higher-stakes disappointments often carry deeper consequences, affecting self-esteem, relationships, and future aspirations. Yet, they also provide meaningful insights into our strengths and areas for growth and help us become more resilient.
In both models, the structure of accumulating small failures into greater resilience is key. Jordan’s missed shots and game losses are direct parallels to life’s small and large setbacks, while his missed game-winning shots reflect high-stakes moments where failure is especially impactful. Both models emphasize that these individual challenges contribute to a deeper capacity for growth and achievement. By using the basketball performance as the source, this analogy frames the necessity of failure, positioning it as a stepping stone toward success. The analogy between Basketball Performance and Life’s Challenges to illustrate how repeated failures contribute to resilience and success for each journey.
For this analogy, the speaker intends to convey the idea that repeated failures are integral to success. By drawing on his own experiences with missed shots, lost games, and high-stakes failures, he emphasizes that setbacks are not final judgments on one’s ability but rather stepping stones that enhance one’s skills and mental toughness over time. Through analogical reasoning, we understand that each missed shot or lost game is mapped to life’s everyday and significant failures, suggesting that both types of experiences contribute incrementally to personal growth.
This analogy applies the principle of structure mapping where both basketball and life are similar where missed opportunities represent isolated failures, high-stakes losses are significant life challenges, and cumulative failures in each domain contribute to overall resilience. By transferring these components, failure is not just unavoidable but essential, making it analogous to a productive element in the journey towards success. This reasoning of resiliency through repeated failures in a domain like sports can be applied to other domains such as personal or professional life.
To reframe this analogy using a new source, let’s replace Michael’s basketball performance with the growth of a tree through seasons of hardship. In this analogy, the target remains life’s challenges and the path to success, but the image of failing in basketball is replaced by the idea of a tree enduring cycles of harsh weather, loss, and regrowth.
In this comparison, each winter season represents a time of hardship, where the tree loses its leaves and endures cold, barren conditions. These moments are challenging but necessary, as the tree is strengthened by surviving through each difficult season. Heavy storms and droughts are analogous to significant life setbacks, which essentially tests the tree’s resilience and longevity. Each storm leaves marks on the tree, much like each life failure leaves an imprint on one’s character, shaping and strengthening it for future challenges. Each difficult season prepares the tree not only to survive but to thrive when conditions improve, mirroring how life’s challenges can also create a resilient foundation.
This new analogy shifts the focus from high-stakes performance and immediate failure (as in Jordan’s missed shots) to a more gradual, natural process of growth through adversity. Instead of framing failure as high-impact moments, the tree analogy positions hardship as part of an ongoing, evolutionary process that unfolds over time, where each setback contributes steadily. This essentially changes the target’s meaning by highlighting patience and endurance over high-intensity resilience, suggesting that success is less about overcoming individual failures but more about long-term persistence. This also implies that direct responses to failure is an impetus towards building strength and resilience slowly through repeated cycles. That said, this Analogy 2.0 transforms the target by demonstrating life’s challenges as part of a natural growth process rather than the immediate bounce-back from high-pressure scenarios.
