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Why You Should Make Failure Your Friend When Learning New Skills

What To Expect

In today’s article Why you should make failure your friend when learning new skills, we are going to discuss everything failure.

How it helps you to succeed, how we can learn from it and some strategies to help deal with any failure you come across. Every human has many failures in their life. There’s no getting past it when it comes to progression.

So know yourself, when you have a failure in your life minor or major. Remember you are not alone as everyone around goes through it too.

Carrying Failure vs Stepping Over Failure

When I was younger there was a challenge I had to do to learn how to keep a positive attitude.

I was giving multiple objects to carry. At first, it was easy but bit by bit it got heavier and heavier where I could no longer carry the objects and with the extra weight they all fell to the ground.

The challenge was to show. If in life you take on too much negativity it will eventually way you down where you can no longer keep a positive attitude any longer.

This principle is the same when it comes to failure. When you carry all your failures with you. One by one it will drag you down which will lead to damaging effects on your mental health. I have seen sad occasions where peoples failure has been too much for the individual. They have decided to not carry on their life any longer.

That’s why everyone should learn when they come up against a failure to not carry with them. You have to immediately act as your mental health is at stake and you have to find it within yourself to step over failure and treat it as a positive learning curve of what not to do.

We Have To Learn To Help People Deal With Failure

In our culture today it’s frowned upon to fail or make a mistake which goes against how we progress as a human. Instead, we should help people by re-teaching them a better way forward where they can learn from their mistakes.

The biggest mistakes we can make in society, of course, will lead a person to become a prisoner.

There are serious crimes that are hard to come back from but why do people who go to prison come out to go back again soon after? One reason is that failure will stick with them forever and they will find it hard to get a job, housing or place back in the community. This is why they can not reform and learn from their mistakes as easily. Every case is unique but what if no one in their life was a good role model for them and never taught them a more positive path to take.

It’s easy to judge but giving people second chances from failure is also something we should learn to do too within society as long as the appropriate re-education is put in place.

In Order To Succeed You Must First Be Willing To Fail

Why you should make failure your friend when learning new skills
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash

When it comes to succeeding you have to prepare your self for failure. You need to treat it as a law that is a consequence of action. Now if anyone is scared of failure. It’s a normal reaction as it’s painful to fail in the moment.

Imagine your public speaking and you forget what you were going to say or you promised everyone you were going to do something but you failed. Of course, it’s painful but it will only continue to be painful if you let it.

There are two options to take when failure strikes you.

1. You can hide away from the world and your problems.

Or

2. You face failure head-on and find a solution to overcome it.

The first one takes little effort and progression halts in your life. Whereas the second option takes a lot of effort but progression advances forward.

I know people where certain failures in their life have made them curl up into their shell to never be seen again. This is not healthy for their mind. By learning strategies to overcome failure is crucial and should be taught from an early age.

As a parent, I have a big say in how my children react to failure in adulthood. When a child is coddled from the world and their problems. When they’re faced with problems as an independent adult they can’t handle the pressure and revert back to comfortability.

By accepting failure as normal and a great learning curve. You will thank yourself later in life for your courage to act with positivity.

Strategies For Learning From Failure

1. Forgive Yourself

Forgiving yourself of your failures is the first step in overcoming failure. From my own experience, I carried too many of my failures but when I let go the weight was released instantly. My overall happiness has improved because I don’t hang on to the past.

2. It Gets You Closer To The Goal

Some failures are in your life as obstacles to get you closer to your goal. Just like doing puzzles or playing games where you keep, failing. Learning from your failures as you go along can help you get closer to your end goal. Just don’t give up along the way just adapt and move forward.

3. Learning From Failure Stories

There are many successful people from past and present who have gone through failure.

In the present day, we have Elon Musk who has gone through many failures along the way to him recently becoming the richest man on earth in 2021. His businesses Tesla and Space X are one example where at the same time each business was going to go bankrupt. Miraculously he found a way out by learning from his failures. Now everyone wants a Tesla and Space X works alongside Nasa with the goal to land on Mars becoming a real prospect.

In the past, there are many great people who were known as failures. Thomas Edison failed over Ten Thousand times when he was creating the electric light bulb.

President Lincoln stands out for me. Now in American culture is one of the most famous presidents of all time. But if you look at his story he failed many times in becoming president. But he learned from his failures and never gave up. Now he has a legacy long after his death.

4. Build A Safe Learning Environment

Whether it be at home or leading a team. Creating a learning environment where someone can feel it’s ok and normal that sometimes they will fail. This Will lead to high productivity and results in the long term.

So when a child makes a mistake with their maths. Show them it’s normal and try again. When your employee forgets what was required of them instead of sacking them, why don’t you teach them what’s meant to be done. It’s been proven that creating these safe environments for learning has boosted the productivity of the individual and organisations.

5. Analyse Failure

When we fail instead of hiding away from it or condemning the person who has failed. Instead, analyse the data and find where they went wrong and come up with solutions to fix it. This is where some of the best work is done on the other side of failure.

Over To You

I hope you understand more about failure from today’s article Why you should make failure your friend when learning new skills.

Knowing that failure is a positive consequence of progress. That everyone goes through failure and that you can overcome any failure in your life. Will go a long way to helping you progress at whatever you do with your mental health intact

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Hi, I'm Adam
Hi, I’m Adam

I’ve spent over 10 years coaching and mentoring people within sport and business. I have many life skills that I have developed and I want to pass these skills on so people can find their best self. I believe it all starts in the mind and I write about valuable tools and strategies to help people grow in this area.