If heavy barbells scare you, you’re not alone. Until you have a bit of experience (both lifting and watching others lift) you may feel slightly terrified at the thought of a bar crashing down on you if you don’t make a lift. Fortunately, fails stop being scary once you learn what actually happens when you fail. So let’s walk through it.

As someone who actively seeks out and writes about parenting hacks every day, I’m always looking for shortcuts and tricks to make your lives (and my own) a tiny bit easier. But not all hacks are created equal, and a hack that works brilliantly for one parent might be a complete waste of time for another. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

Similar to rollerblading, cooking is not something everyone has a knack for. Also like rollerblading, cooking is something that one can learn, and a big part of learning is practice. They say fortune favours the bold, and taking on intimidating challenges will make you a better cook. (This is where I find cooking and rollerblading to diverge, as I once bruised my tailbone severely with bold rollerblading.)

James Holzhauer’s rise to fame has captivated Jeopardy! fans during the past two months in the U.S. But perhaps even more captivating is the way a 27-year-old librarian seemingly came out of nowhere to defeat him. New champion Emma Boettcher can be a lesson to us all: If you want to become an overnight success story, plan to fail a whole bunch first.

Three years ago, I injured my lower back while weightlifting (and again, two times after). It was a motivational buzzkill, to say the least. I’ve struggled with having to lower weights and sometimes, have avoided the gym altogether, feeling as though I’d let myself down.

Chris Gethard is a famous comedian, podcast host, and author — but it took him a long time to get to where he is today.

If there's a person who knows a thing or two about falling, it's Jessie Graff. But for the American Ninja Warrior phenom, the important part is getting back up. Through a new video series called Stunt Sitter, Graff teaches self-described "helicopter" parents how to let kids take risks and even - gasp - fail. We asked Graff what mums and dads can do to raise children who are resilient, confident and tough, both physically and mentally.

My colleague Patrick Allan once explained how to avoid being a sore loser at competitive games. Let's revisit his lesson in a higher-stakes context. Say, an election.

Very few people will turn a crummy Yelp review into a work project, but writer Alexandra Franzen has done just that with her new book, You're Going to Survive.

Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations, Lifehacker's weekly dip into the pool of stoic wisdom, and a guide to using its waters to reflect on and improve your life.

It turns out that, while I am a very enthusiastic pie maker, I am not very good at it. I have seen a very wide gamut of pie failures over my baking career. Overcooked and cracked crusts, soggy bottoms, burnt edges, foul soup inside a crust -- I've been there. And this isn't as isolated as you'd think. These are all common failures in one's journey to a perfect pie, and we can learn from them. So join me, and let's get to problem solving.

Let it go, they say when you screw up. Move on, forget about it, what's done is done. No, says a recent study, you need to feel bad in order to learn.

Turning out a cake, only to have it fall apart, is one of the most frustrating experiences one can have in the kitchen. But ugly cake is still cake, and there's no reason you shouldn't eat it.

"Failure" is a major buzzword in parenting today: In order to raise successful, resilient kids, we need to let them fail. If your kid forgets his homework or his sports uniform at home, don't bring it to him. If she's struggling with building a block tower or, later on, an essay, or even later on (heaven forbid), getting to her first job on time, don't step in. Only by struggling, and sometimes failing, do kids learn exactly what they must do to succeed.

There seems to be a lot of pressure on the home cook these days. It isn't enough to feed your family chicken breasts -- one should be feeding them free-range, organic, perfectly juicy chicken breasts that were cooked sous vide and served with vegetables you regrew from a curated selection of kitchen scraps. This perfectionist vibe is permeating food writing and the culture of home cooking, with everyone striving to churn out consistently perfect meals, night after night.

At elite universities, faculty members have been noticing a problem. Many students, while impressive on paper, seem to be unable to cope with simple struggles -- getting assigned to a dorm room they're not thrilled with, scoring less than an A-minus on a midterm, or not making the cut on school teams. The lack of resilience has become so apparent that Smith College now offers an entire course on how to fail. (One uncomfortable class project: Having your worst failures projected onto a large screen in the campus hub. Ouch.)

In a perfect world, nothing bad would ever happen to anybody. On the other hand, some misfortunes can help to make you a better person. All of these experiences build empathy, teach a lesson, or make you appreciate the good things in life.

People thrive when they're working against some kind of force -- even if that force isn't real. If you're looking for a way to motivate yourself, try giving yourself an imaginary scapegoat.

Last week, readers told us their biggest life hacking fails, and some of them were truly spectacular. So good, in fact, we just had to share them with you. You'll laugh, you'll cry, but you'll mostly just be glad you didn't try out any of these hacks yourself.