Tag Archives: success from failure

22

Your Valuable Learning Experiences

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Familiar Territory

Everyone makes mistakes
It’s OK To Make Mistakes

An inevitable part of being human is that we all make mistakes in life. Nobody is perfect, no matter how hard we try to be.

That has always made us wonder: Why are we all so hard on ourselves when we make a mistake? When you analyze things, you see that failure can be a real problem. Nobody would choose an error and the trauma that comes along with it over the easy sailing of success, but that leads back to the point, no matter who you are, no matter how smart, funny, famous or talented, you are going to make mistakes and experience failure at some point in your life.

But I wanted to say that our lives are not the mistakes and failures that define us; how we react to those mistakes and failures determines who we are.

“In school, we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, we learn by making mistakes when we look at how humans are designed to learn. We learn to walk by falling; if we never fell, we would never walk.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad

How a Mistake can Crush You

mistakes can crush you
Good Quote

When bad things happen in life, you have a choice in how to deal with them. You always have a choice. You can let the wrong something define you or let the unfortunate incident teach you how to be a better person.

Being human, I have made many life mistakes and bad decisions and experienced failure. There have been times when I was discouraged and felt sorry that life wasn’t fair, and it was easy to place all of the blame on others’ actions.

But if I wanted to grow and evolve into the kind of person I wanted to be, I had to look hard in the mirror and understand that if I let the bad things that have happened in my life crush me, then I am allowing my life and my destiny to be determined by someone else.

When you let your whole being be so controlled by not only the mistakes you make but, even more importantly, what you perceive others to think about your setbacks, you will slowly be crushed by your mistakes.

How a Failure can inspire You

Don't let Mistakes Define You
You Are Awesome

All great things have been accomplished for one of two reasons, inspiration or desperation. What may, on the surface, seem like a failure may be viewed as a victory in the broad scope of one’s life.

You may have discovered a talent you would never have found because you were forced to look for it. You may have traveled somewhere you would never have gone because your failure caused you to move. You may have met your soulmate only after a nasty breakup that allowed you to look inside yourself and discover what you need in a relationship. It is easy to quit in life, and it is easy to go into the fetal position and say, “Enough.”

But when you push yourself to continue pursuing a complete and happy life,  you will find that many of the low barriers we face in life are merely hurdles to hop over on our way to the finish line, not impenetrable walls that stop us from achieving greatness. Sometimes, our mistakes, failures, or setbacks can provide the momentum to push us toward making dreams a reality.

Don’t let the Fear of Failure Determine Your Future.

learning from mistakes
A Long Book!

Whatever the case, we can’t let the fear of failure determine how we live our life because we can fail at any time, and it can happen.

Learning how to deal with the loss and disappointment of having things not work out the way we plan may be the most valuable lesson we can learn in life. Life guarantees only one thing you will have experiences; that’s about it.

You are not assured that your life will be non-stop happiness without any sadness or disappointment. Those just come as a part of the package, but true greatness can be achieved by anyone who sees the risk of failure and disappointment but continues to see what happens.

Do not let the fear of what might happen to stop you from doing anything in life. You may fail, you may look foolish, some people may laugh, and you may be misunderstood, but all of that doesn’t matter if you have to courage to look your fear in the eye and try!

You will NEVER accomplish anything worthwhile unless you create a dream and have the courage to try to make it come true. If you make mistakes or fail along the way, understand that it is not a condemnation of your goals and dreams but a needed step to achieving them. Nobody said that doing anything worthwhile would be easy or quick to complete.

In fact, as in most things, the journey to achieving our goals needs to be appreciated as much as reaching the plan itself. You will always cherish the victory when you know it was hard-fought and won, which will have much more value.

Quotes On Mistakes

“Some of the best lessons we ever learn, we learn from our mistakes and failures. The error of the past is the success and wisdom of the future.” – Tyron Edwards.

“A failure is an event, never a person.” ~William D. Brown,

“I have learned more from my mistakes than from my successes.” – Sir Humphry Davy

“The only time you don’t fail is the last time you try anything – and it works.” ~William Strong

“Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.” – Henry Ford

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” ~Thomas Edison

“If you have made mistakes…there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start at any moment you choose, for this thing we call ‘failure’ is not the falling, but the staying down.” – Mary Pickford

“When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.” – Katherine Mansfield

“There is no failure except in no longer trying.” ~Elbert Hubbard

“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” ~Samuel Beckett

“We learn wisdom from failure much more than success. We often discover what we WILL do by finding out what we will NOT do.” – Samuel Smiles

“If you’re doing your best, you won’t have time to worry about failure.”

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein.

“You know, by the time you’ve reached my age, you’ve made plenty of mistakes if you’ve lived your life properly.” – Ronald Reagan.

“Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure… it just means you haven’t succeeded yet.” ~Robert Schuller

“One fails forward toward success.”  ~Charles F. Kettering

“Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could do so little.” – Edmund Burke

“One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making mistakes.”  ~Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

“A man may fall many times, but he won’t be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.” ~Elmer G. Letterman

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

“There are defeats more triumphant than victories.” ~Michel de Montaigne

“Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, “I have failed three times,” and what happens when he says, “I am a failure.” “~S.I. Hayakawa

“A failure is a man who has blundered but cannot cash in the experience.” ~Elbert Hubbard

21

Life Learning

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Make The Most of Your Failure

Learn from failure try again
Samuel Beckett

Sometimes it feels like we can never do anything right, that everything we do is inherently wrong, and we have no clue what we are doing.  Most thinking people will feel this way at some point in their lives. It is just human nature.  Often as we try out new thoughts to see which ones are “keepers” and which ones need to be thrown back, we will experience failure characterized as a mistake.   However, it is important to understand that mistakes in life are not only inevitable. They are vital to our growth as people and professionals.  You will never experience genius in any field without first experiencing a few missteps along the way.

Learning from the cruel hand of experience has been occurring throughout history. It would help if you didn’t allow your mistakes to define you because you have been presented with a powerful growth opportunity when you approach it from the right frame of mind.  If you analyze the failure, why did this happen?  Why didn’t it work out?  What can I do better?  How can I fix it?  You will start to build on the misfortune, using the knowledge you were able to compile by failing to move you toward a solid construction of a success.

 

Learning More From Failure

Make the most of your mistakes
New shirt!

It is often difficult to learn from success because if you feel everything went right, you are not going to be looking as hard for the weaknesses.  When you experience failure, it is not desirable, so you are motivated to find out what is wrong or what you can do better and fix it.  This was the case for me as a coach.  When we won, it was easy to pat yourself on the back and feel good about yourself.  You won, how bad could you be?  But when you lose, you know that changes have to be made, both mentally and physically, to experience success the next time.  The weaknesses jump out at you, and you always feel like you should have seen it coming.  Or even if you were able to recognize the problem, it is difficult to motivate change in people experiencing success.  Only after the group touches the cold hand of failure will they be willing to accept change.  We are like this as individuals, and if we are experiencing nothing but perceived success, there is no motivation for change.   That is why we all learn more from failure than we can learn from success.

Our Society Fears Failure

success-and-failure-sign
One can lead to the other.

Today, failure is looked at as something to be avoided today, even more so than in the past.   Parents look at their kids today and want to control every aspect of their lives so that they can protect them from failure.  In doing this, they rob their kids of one of the most powerful learning experiences they can have.  Why are we afraid to let kids make mistakes?  I think it is for several reasons. First of all, mistakes can be painful. In many ways, some poor decisions can affect someone for their entire life, or in some cases, end a life.  This is tragic but doesn’t change the fact that an individual needs the freedom to make mistakes to reach the potential that they have inside.  Lessons learned in this manner are lifelong and provide a solid base for development.  You can’t make mistakes for your kids, and you can only guide them, love them, pick them up when they fall, and urge them to keep moving forward, trying again.

When you look at your life from an outside perspective and analyze events you would characterize as mistakes, honestly, make a list of the positives that have come from it.  You will be surprised at how your perspective will change.  We all want to avoid mistakes, and the wisdom of time allows us to do this more often.  You cannot live your life in fear of a mistake, or you are not living your life at all.

Learning from Failure Quotes:

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
– Albert Einstein –

 

Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.
– Og Mandino –
Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
– Abraham Lincoln –
The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.
– Dr. Joyce Brothers –
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
– Elbert Hubbard –
If you’re not failing now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative
– Woody Allen –
Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure.
– William Saroyan –
To succeed, you must fail so that you know what not to do the next time.
– Anthony D’Angelo –
Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.
– Al Bernstein –
Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.
– Malcolm Forbes –
You learn as much from those who have failed as from those who have succeeded.
– Michael Johnson –
From success to failure is one step; from failure to success is a long road.
– Yiddish Proverb –
Success does not consist in never making blunders but in never making the same one a second time.
– Josh Billings –
Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it’s a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.
– Al Franken –
Instruction does not prevent wasted time or mistakes, and mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all.
– James Anthony Froude –
Our life business is not to succeed but to continue to fail in good spirits.
– Robert Louis Stevenson –
The things that hurt us teach us.
– Author Unknown –
Being defeated is often only a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
– Marilyn Vos Savant –
My great concern is not whether you have failed but whether you are content with your failure.
– Abraham Lincoln
You’re on the road to success when you realize that failure is only a detour.
– Author is unknown –
Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.
– Zig Ziglar –
It’s how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success.
– David Feherty –