My team had just lost a basketball game. As I got in my dad’s car, I knew the first question he was going to ask: “What could have you done to help your team win the game”? I learned long ago he did not want to hear how Anthony, Jim, or Bob could have played better but what I could have done to help my team win.
As I became older, I would ask myself this question before I even talked to my Dad. It became a habit to reflect on my performance and learn from my mistakes. I was always under the impression that people learned more from failure than they did from success.
Recently, however, I listened to a psychology lecture about a study that made me rethink this belief. The research found that when people did not answer a math problem correctly, they did not learn from their failure. Instead, they tuned it out. Nobody likes to fail, and to protect our self-esteem, we just pretend the failure did not happen.
So, how can we learn from failure? The first step is to realize that everyone fails. The psychologist giving this lecture provided many examples of her own failures. What people do learn from are other people’s failures. When you fail at something, you can think of what advice you would give your friend in a similar situation.
Having a growth mindset is another way that you can learn from failure. Here are some statements that you can keep top of mind to help you:
I love challenges because they always make me better.
I truly believe that people can become better.
After I make a mistake, I can always learn from it.
I sometimes dreaded when my father forced me to think about my failures. As time went on, however, I realized that once again he taught me a skill that would be extremely helpful throughout my life.
