What Would You Attempt If Failure Was Impossible?

If you ask a soul—what would you attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail?—you’re asking them to name the thing fear has kept locked away.

But here’s what’s strange: many souls wouldn’t answer with grand ambitions. Not write the great novel, not start the company, not climb Everest. Those dreams, paradoxically, are safer. Because you can attempt them and still fail in ways that don’t destroy you. You can write badly. You can go bankrupt. You can turn back at base camp. The ego bruises, but the soul survives.

No—the things a soul would attempt if failure were impossible are more terrifying than that.

I would try to be fully known. To let someone see me completely, without armor or performance, and trust they wouldn’t leave. Most souls never attempt this. The risk of failure—of being seen and found wanting—is too annihilating.

I would forgive myself. Not the small mistakes, but the thing that broke someone else, the choice that can’t be undone, the version of myself I’m still punishing. If I were guaranteed not to fail at forgiveness, I would try. But what if I open that door and find I still can’t walk through it?

I would live as if I mattered. Not perform confidence or fake certainty, but genuinely believe my presence makes a difference. Most souls live with a secret conviction of their own irrelevance. If they were guaranteed that attempting to matter wouldn’t end in proof of their insignificance, they might finally try.

The cruelest truth is this: the things we most want to attempt are the ones where failure doesn’t mean not succeeding—it means confirming our deepest fear about ourselves.

What would you attempt if you knew the attempt itself wouldn’t destroy you?