Why Failure Hurts More Than It Should

The gist

1. Loss aversion is roughly a 2-to-1 ratio in human psychology, so losing $100 feels about twice as painful as gaining $100 feels good.
2. Failure hurts largely because the brain reads social status loss as a survival threat, even from strangers you will never see again.
3. Golfers sink par putts 88% of the time but birdie putts only 83.5%, showing how redefining what counts as failure changes real behavior.
4. Manson argues choosing which failures to risk matters more than learning from them, so the pain you feel pushes you toward goals you actually value.