The "Try Again" rule is a simple studio agreement: anyone can invite anyone else to try again. If someone says something untrue or unkind about another person's identity, any learner can invite them to restate it in a way that names the action instead of the person. It protects a core belief at Acton — that every learner has unconditional worth and carries seeds of genius — by separating who a person is from what they did.
How does the "Try Again" rule work?
What if anyone in the studio could invite anyone else to try again?
That's the heart of the "Try Again" rule. Here's how it works: if someone says something untrue or unkind about another person's identity, you can invite them to try again, restating it in a way that names the action rather than the person.
Example:
"You're a loser." — try again — "What you did helped us lose the game."
Why does the "Try Again" rule matter?
This rule is rooted in a foundational belief at Acton: every learner has worth and carries seeds of genius inside of them. That worth is unconditional, and no action a learner takes can dissolve it.
That is very different from our results, output, and actions. All of us make mistakes, often, and even on a regular basis. But a learner who makes a mistake isn't a mistake. They are simply a person who made one.
This goes deeper. When you call someone a loser or an idiot, you're saying something that is fundamentally untrue, and potentially harmful. Flip it on its head: if a person were fundamentally a loser or an idiot, what would the hoped-for outcome for that person even be?
A person with real worth who makes a poor decision or takes an action with poor consequences has simply made a mistake, and a mistake can be changed, modified, and improved. It's very similar to the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.
