Learning from Failings

There are different angles we can look at failings from. We can consider them to be fatal blows to our progress and give up or we can look at them as opportunities to learn something new. These are differing perspectives and they have differing consequences. It is of this I will like to speak to you about today – how to learn from failings.

Note that the constant in the equation of success is failing. To fear failings therefore does not help overcome it. The person who has truly overcome failings is the person who learns from every opportunity he or she has to fail. This means what should have had the potential of discouraging and in fact destroying future possibilities turns out to be the teacher. When Thomas Edison tried several times to make the electric bulb and didn’t succeed he reportedly said, “I didn’t fail. I learnt 10000 different ways the electric bulb cannot be created.” That’s the paradigm of a person who understands that failings are effective teachers.

The flip side of this is that people find it difficult to perceive how failings can be our teachers. I mean, how can something I detest be what will teach me how to do the thing I want to do effectively? It is always important to keep in mind the fact that failings are inevitable. Show me a person who never fails and I will show you a person who never tries to achieve anything. In fact, this same person will not amount to anything worthwhile. To establish this point I often ask folks how they learned to ride bicycles. Without an exception they all state that they fell several times in the process of learning. In fact some say that they didn’t know exactly when they perfected the skill of riding a bicycle. This is so because the transition between imperfection and perfection, between failings and mastering, is seamless. You move from one world to the other without knowing when you cross the border.