The Two Most Important Steps You Must Take to Learn from Failure
I have said it many times and I will say it again today, learning from failure is overrated. However, me saying this doesn’t mean that I think it’s something to avoid or ignore. Learning from failure is still valuable when you do it the right way.
The problem is that so many people don’t do it the right way. The idea of learning from failure becomes just that, an idea. Moreover, it’s an idea that makes you feel better telling the story of a failure without any work to back it up. If you know me, I’m all about the work. I value doing good over looking good, and that takes work.
With this in mind, the work you must start with after a failure requires a significant amount of self-reflection. That self-reflection must focus on:
- Identifying the specific mistakes made to cause the failure.
- Working on specific steps / processes to permanently eradicate those mistakes from happening again.
If you don’t do these two things, then you won’t learn from the failure. Most people can do #1, but #2 is where things get murky. Most people can reflect and figure out #1 in a matter of minutes or hours. On the other hand, it takes weeks or months to make #2 come to fruition.
To achieve #2, it will require extensive repetitive practice to eliminate bad habits and instincts and replace them with new good habits and instincts. This is the work learning from failure requires and this is why so many people fail to learn from failure. This is also why most people are better off focusing on learning from success. It’s far more natural to do more of what is already working for you (i.e. strengthening your strengths vs. fixing your weaknesses).