Learning from failures first starts from acknowledging and accepting a failure. When we do so, we are closer to learning from the experience and growing through them.
Learning from failures can create value by helping us understand:
- how to approach a similar situation in the future
- personal strengths and weaknesses
- what external forces that can hinder success
- ways that creativity can improve a given circumstance
Whether we experience personal failure or witness another's, the learning experience is just as valuable. It is generally harder to learn from another's failure because often times, the outcomes do not affect us. To best employ this principle, an individual must be aware of others in his/her workplace so that the learning experience is on-going and second nature. However, when learning from another's failure there is a fine line between constructive learning (such as asking strategic, business-related questions in a respectful manner) and being nosy (gossipping and considering opinions of others before generating your own).
I believe that this is a valuable principle that I employ regularly. Although I am not proud of admitting certain failures, I am however proud that I have learned from them and am able to improve myself. The most valuable failure I have experienced was my experience in a Chemical Technology course in SAIT. After high school, I was unsure of what courses I wanted to take in university and made a last-minute effort in jumping into a course. As a result, my first post-secondary experience was one that would descrease my GPA and therefore prevent me from admission into other programs in the future. Eventually I grew to understand my strengths as a student and became more aware of what undergraduate program would unleash my creativity in a structured form; marketing! I pushed through my second year by taking open studies at Mount Royal and eventually gained acceptance to my current program. I have definately learned from this failure in that I am more aware of my tastes as a student and take better precautions when making life, career and education decisions. It took some time to accept my failure, but now I am thankful that I experienced this failure early enough to correct it.
An individual may not see the value in learning from failures because it is believed that failures should be viewed as negative experiences and therefore, should not be learned from. This mindset may believe that accepting failure can breed one to take no extra effort towards success. I understand this point of view in that there should be a limit to how we view failures as positive experiences so that we are able to strive for success.
What prevents me from applying this principle more consistently is the time it takes me to accept a failure. At times, it can be hard to accept a failure quick enough to correct it. Self-doubt and a decreased sense of confidence sometimes prevents the learning experience of failures to become valuable. By doing so, I concentrate too much on the negative outcomes of a failure that I neglect understanding what decisions led to the failure.
A question that still remains regarding this principle is:
Often times when we experience a failure, we do not consider learning from them until we experience a similar situation where we can apply this new understanding. Is it important that the learning experience be considered right away in order to better understand the details more clearly as the experienece is fresh in our minds?
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