Counterpoint: You Can Only Learn From Failure If You Fail The Right Way
In youth sports it’s common to hear parents and coaches say there’s no such thing as failure, only learning. While this makes for a good sound bite, the reality is that most people don’t learn from failure. That’s because learning from failure is hard and takes both preparation and follow-up work.
As a result, the only way to learn from failure is if a process of planning and executing that plan proceeds that failure. It’s in this preparation where you will find those learning lessons. The biggest of which is that the process matters more than the outcome.
There are times in life when you prepare your hardest as well as give your best effort and still fail. Conversely, there are times in life when you don’t prepare at all and give a poor effort and still win.
In short, if after you fail you don’t follow-up with an analysis of the process that led to that failure you won’t learn anything.
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
Henry Ford
Just as the Henry Ford quote above alludes to, failure is an opportunity but you can only seize that opportunity if you’re intelligent about it.
Simply stated, failure is an outcome you can’t always control, and you can’t learn from things you don’t control. So if you want to guarantee learning from failure, be intelligent about it. Focus on learning from those things you control starting with the process.