Failure = Learning
Define failure as learning.
When a toddler falls down, do we say, “Man, he really messed up!”
or, more likely,
“Wonderful, he’s learning to walk!” However, when you fall down—blow the sales pitch, get passed over for the promotion, lose your job—often you feel as though you’ve failed.
Worse yet, you may define yourself as a failure.
It is better to view failure as a temporary and necessary step on the way to where you want to be. Just like falling down is a predictable and inevitable process for a toddler learning to walk, so, too, are the occasional failures that occur along the way to success in whatever you attempt.
In fact, it’s hard to improve if you don’t fail, because lack of success delineates clearly where opportunities for improvement lie.
So, when you do fall down, don’t label yourself a failure. Instead, recover quickly from temporary disappointments by asking
- “What can I learn from this?
- What worked and what didn’t?
- How can I do it better next time?”
Then, follow the toddler’s example: Get up with a smile on your face and try again, knowing you are better for the experience.
This excerpt if from a longer article, you can read on my previous post, ”There’s a Fortune in Failure.” by Dr,Gary Bradt.
