I was sitting in a critical process failure review at Amazon. Something had gone wrong—badly wrong. The kind of wrong where everyone in the room knows someone's head might roll.

That someone was me.

I looked like a man about to be hanged. My mind was racing through worst-case scenarios. Career over. Reputation destroyed. Years of work undone by one mistake.

Then Manesh Mahatme spoke.

"It's just a mild fever—think of it as a vaccination. Sort it out, build a mechanism to ensure we're never here again. We sometimes need vaccines to get stronger."

Three sentences. They changed everything.

What his words did:

Acknowledged the mistake. He didn't pretend nothing happened. The fever was real. The failure was real. No gaslighting, no minimizing.

Recognized it as salvageable. Mild fever. Not terminal. Not career-ending. A temporary state that would pass—if handled correctly.

Challenged us to grow from it. Build a mechanism. Don't just survive this moment—use it. Extract the antibodies. Get stronger.

Everything was eventually resolved. But in that moment, it felt like the end of the world. Manesh's reframe turned panic into purpose.

Here's the mental model I've carried since:

Infections spread and weaken. Some failures compound. You make a mistake, panic, make another mistake, spiral. The original problem metastasizes. You end up weaker than before.

Vaccinations inoculate and strengthen. Other failures teach. You make a mistake, analyze it, build a mechanism, emerge more resilient. The original problem becomes a source of immunity.

The failure itself doesn't determine which type it becomes. Your response does.

Same event. Two completely different outcomes. The variable is you.

There's a training principle I love: paratroopers start by jumping off stools.

Not planes. Stools.

They learn to fall correctly at low stakes. They build muscle memory for landing. They make their mistakes when a mistake means a bruised knee, not a broken spine.

Then they climb higher. Jump, fall, learn, climb higher, repeat.

Big dreams invite big mistakes. The goal isn't to avoid falling—it's to practice falling at heights where you can still learn from it.

So here's what I ask myself now, after every setback:

Is this an infection or a vaccination?

Am I letting this spread and weaken me? Or am I extracting the antibodies and building immunity?

The answer is never determined by the failure itself. It's determined by what I do next.

Build the mechanism. Ensure you're never here again. Use the mild fever to get stronger.

That's the vaccination mindset.

~Discovering Turiya@work@life