The Reason Why Failure is the Key to Success
Every motivational speaker and self-help guru will tell you that failure is the key to success. However, what’s often missing in their speeches is why! Why can’t you just go from one success to the next repeatedly and keep growing and getting better?
Well, it comes down to how the process of improvement works. Unfortunately, you can’t improve in life by playing it safe. If you take the safe route and do what’s comfortable then you will remain stagnant because you won’t have a reason to change your behavior. Consequently, if you never change you never get better. This is just a fact of life. The only way to constantly improve is to constantly try to do things better.
Moreover, in this process of trying to do things better, you may or may not succeed. In fact, it’s likely you will fail just as much or more than you do succeed. Thus, when you build the habit of constantly pushing the limits of “better”, you also build the habit of failing forward.
Ultimately, this is why failure is the key to success. Before success can lead to success, learning the process of failing forward is a must. This process includes learning how to use the 7 metacognition questions of the strategic mindset to facilitate personal growth.
- What can I do to help myself master the things that caused me to fail?
- What can I do next to help myself improve?
- Next time is there a way to do what I did even better?
- Can I approach the things I control with more mental flexibility?
- How can I be more effective in my preparation?
- How can I keep track of how effective my approach is going forward?
- What can I do differently starting right now that will help me in the future?