While discussing inventions, Thomas Edison’s associate, Walter S. Mallory, once said to him, “Isn’t it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work you have done, you haven’t been able to get any results?”
Edison replied, “Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work.”
People tend to see success as positive and failure as a negative, but Edison’s quote shows this isn’t always the case. There are many valuable lessons you can learn from failure, and this knowledge can help you become a more successful and productive entrepreneur.
At its most basic definition, failure is a lack of success. For businesses, failure can take on many shapes and forms. Failure could mean you were unable to land a big sale or refer to a marketing campaign that never got the results you were looking for. You can also fail in your hiring practices or training opportunities.
However, it can also refer to your business as a whole. A business failure occurs when a company shuts down after consistently being unable to turn a profit. However, it is important to note that not all company closures are failures.
If a company owner closes a profitable company to pursue different career opportunities, if the business was always intended to be temporary or the business owner dies or retires, the business is likely not closing due to failure.
Failure happens to everyone It’s an inevitable part of life But how we respond to failure determines whether it becomes a stumbling block or a stepping stone to future success.
While failure can be painful and demoralizing in the moment, it also presents valuable opportunities to grow and improve. By adopting the right mindset and strategies, we can learn from our mistakes, pick ourselves up, and come back stronger.
Here are 10 powerful strategies to help you learn from failure and move forward with renewed purpose
1. Observe How Others Handle Failure
Pay attention to how successful people and high achievers respond to setbacks and disappointments. Notice how they take responsibility, analyze what went wrong, make adjustments, and keep persisting until they succeed.
Model their mindsets and behaviors. Observing others who bounce back from failure can inspire us to adopt these constructive attitudes ourselves. We realize failure is not the end and we too can pick ourselves up and try again.
2. Create Emotional Distance Before Analyzing Your Mistakes
In the initial shock and pain of failure, our thinking can be clouded by disappointment, frustration, and regret. Before analyzing what went wrong, it’s helpful to create some emotional distance.
Let the initial sting subside before diving into reflective analysis. Or discuss your failure with a trusted mentor or friend who can help you gain perspective. With a cooler head, you’ll be able to learn from the experience effectively.
3. Share Your Story to Inspire Others
Rather than hiding your failure out of shame, share your story to inspire others who are struggling. When you open up about your own mistakes and lessons learned, it helps create a culture of continuous learning vs. perfection.
Others will feel less alone in their setbacks. Your vulnerability and growth mindset can motivate them to view failures as opportunities for improvement.
4. Recognize the Successes Along the Way
Even when the end result is a failure, there are often wins along the journey. Make a list of everything you did right, such as your effort, persistence, new skills gained, insights uncovered, relationships built.
Celebrate and build on these small successes rather than just dwelling on where you fell short. This balanced view boosts resilience.
5. Let Yourself Feel the Disappointment
Don’t just gloss over failure or pretend you’re fine. The healthiest approach is to let yourself fully process the negative emotions, while being careful not to spiral into rumination.
Journal about your feelings, speak them aloud to a trusted friend, or release them through exercise. Allowing yourself to feel the sting can help you gain closure and move into a positive headspace.
6. Keep Your Eyes on the Big Picture
In the throes of failure, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture: your larger goals and purpose. Remind yourself why you started this journey in the first place. Reconnect with your core motivations and values.
When you view setbacks as temporary obstacles on a longer path, you’ll be motivated to learn from the experience and continue striving towards your bigger vision.
7. Adopt a Growth Mindset
People with a “fixed mindset” see abilities as fixed and failures as damaging. People with a “growth mindset” see abilities as developable and failures as opportunities to improve.
By intentionally cultivating a growth mindset, you can view failures more positively – as feedback for growth rather than signs of permanent flaw. This mental shift empowers you to analyze your mistakes and make better decisions going forward.
8. Practice Mindfulness to Clear Negative Headspace
Mindfulness practices like meditation, deep breathing, and present-moment awareness can help clear mental clutter and negative self-talk after failure.
By observationally watching your thoughts without judgment, you can let go of rumination and self-criticism. This clears mental space for rational analysis and planning how to improve.
9. Analyze Errors Using a Process of Honest Reflection
Once you establish emotional distance and a growth mindset, methodically analyze:
- What exactly went wrong and why?
- How can I improve my preparation/strategy/skills to prevent this in the future?
- What lessons have I learned that will help me make better decisions going forward?
Avoid self-blame but take responsibility. The goal is to extract every lesson so you can refine your thinking and abilities.
10. Visualize Future Success
To conclude your learning experience, visualize handling similar situations successfully in the future, based on the lessons extracted.
See yourself demonstrating heightened skills, wisdom, calm, and poise. Envision the satisfaction of achieving a better outcome next time. This mental rehearsal solidifies the learning and boosts motivation.
Turn Failure into a Stepping Stone
Implementing these strategies helps us reflect on failures thoughtfully, extract the lessons, find the silver linings, and emerge wiser and stronger.
Rather than repeat the same mistakes, we can make better decisions going forward, armed with hard-won wisdom. By embracing a growth mindset and thoughtful analysis, our failures become stepping stones to achieving our biggest goals and dreams.
How to learn from your failures
Rarely in the business world is there success without failure. As you pursue your entrepreneurial dreams, you’re going to fail. It’s often said that failure doesn’t stop people; it’s how people handle failure that stops them.
When you encounter failure, tackle it head on and learn from your mistakes. Realize that every idea that pops up in your mind isn’t going to work. Take the time to organize your thoughts after a failure and realize what you did wrong. Above all else, be willing to learn and grow.
When you’re doing well in life, it feels like nothing can stop you. There are no words that can properly pin down feeling like you’re on top of the world. However, when failure hits, it hurts. Sometimes it hurts so bad that you think you’ll never be successful again.
Staying humble helps curb the dramatic feeling of loss and failure. While you’re flying high on the feelings of success, never forget that you’re human, and treat everyone with the same humility and respect that you expect in return.
When you’re humble, you’ll be mentally prepared for failure when it comes your way. It will also ensure that you don’t get a “big head.” Plus, people who are close to you will help lift you up when things are not going your way.
Find silver linings in your mistakes
It’s almost impossible to find a story of success that doesn’t have a trail of mistakes behind it. Nearly everyone experiences failure at some point in their life. The key to overcoming obstacles and becoming successful starts with learning from your mistakes.
When failure strikes, ask yourself why it happened. Was it a result of something you did? Or did an outside force play a part?
Don’t be afraid to be accountable when you’re responsible for a business failure. In many cases, something could have been done differently to prevent the collapse. Think deeply about your situation and don’t be afraid to do a little soul-searching.
One of the ways to learn from your failures is by embracing change. Some people absolutely despise change, and it’s easy to see why. People get caught up in their ways, they get used to seeing the same people at the office, and they like the routine.
When you fail, sometimes you have to change things drastically. If things are not going your way and you have to start over, sometimes you have to sit back and look at the changes that need to be made and embrace them.
When you embrace change after a failure, you’re encouraging healthy mental growth and development. If you want to be a healthy entrepreneur, you have to be a mentally healthy human being.
Not every idea that pops into your mind is a good one. When you’re on a roll, it’s easy to want to act on every business idea that comes to mind.
Maybe you’re thinking about making a new product, or perhaps you want to beef up your marketing campaign. You could just have a bunch of blog ideas that you know will generate more traffic.
Slow down. The best thing you can do to filter through your ideas is to take notes. Either carry around a small notepad or download an app to your smartphone or laptop. As ideas pop up, jot them down. Give your thoughts time to marinate before you act on them.
There is a saying that for every good idea, there are 100 bad ones. Bad ideas can lead to failure on both a small and large scale. Note your thoughts and revisit them in the coming hours, days or even weeks. In most cases, you’ll discover that most of your ideas were not as good as you initially thought.
How to overcome your mistakes
How do you learn from failure?
The first step to learn from failure is to accept that mistakes are common in the workplace. Remind yourself that you’re still a competent employee, and hardships are often parts of the learning process. You can also look forward to the professional you can be in the future.
How can leaders learn from failure?
And successful learning from failure is not simple: It requires context-specific strategies. But first leaders must understand how the blame game gets in the way and work to create an organizational culture in which employees feel safe admitting or reporting on failure.
How do you deal with failure?
Framing failures from a social angle, a domain in which people tend to reason more logically. Increasing cognitive resources, meaning dedicating more time to learning from setbacks. Building a local culture (e.g., organizational culture) that focuses not only on learning from success but also failure. See Table 1 for a summary.
Why does learning start with a failure?
Learning starts with a failure that challenges the way we thought things worked. The lesson does not appear immediately because, at first, we cannot make sense of what happened. And this bothers us. What was wrong with our perspective at the time?
