You learn more from your failures than you do from your successes.

When you fail it feels bad, it can even hurt. But there is always something to learn. You simply have to look for it. I think failure teaches you more than success precisely because it feels bad. It hurts, so you don’t want to make the same mistake anymore. You have to do something about it to not get hurt the next time. So you adjust. If you win all the time, there isn’t that same necessity to improve, you can become complacent. That is a trap. Success can easily go to your head.

In a race if you finish fourth and aren’t on the podium, you’re not going to be happy about it, especially if the third place was right under your nose. You’re going to want the podium even more.

You make a mistake. You get hurt or ruin something. Accept what happened. Then, learn from it. The other alternative is to bitch about your losing and identify as a loser. That is obviously the more destructive attitude. Rather identify as a learner.

You’re allowed to feel bad. But it’s your resilience, your ability to get back up and try again, that makes you great. It’s not how high you go. The man who wins a gold medal once but then stops, doesn’t have the same character as the man who finishes last, comes again, improves, looses again, comes back for more and progressively works his way up the podium.

When you loose you have to come back for more. Fear of failure is normal, but unnecessary if you embrace it.  As Mark Twain once said:

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

Success and failure are win/win situations. If you win, it’s a win. If you loose, it’s a win. You can perceive it as a loss but I find it most helpful to think of it as a win. You get to learn something.

If you lose money, think of it as a win. What ever you lose, think of it as a win. Figure out what is there to be learned. There is always something to be learned. Always. It may not always feel like there is something, but there is. You need to find it. It may be a while before you recognise what you learned. You have to be open to learning.

We only hear what listen to.

We learn much more rapidly when we fail, because we have to adapt. Success can become comfortable and turn into complacency, thus stifling your growth. When you succeed, you can look for that thing you can improve or that you didn’t do as well as you wanted. But before you do that you have to celebrate your success.

So remember, there is always something to learn. It’s your job to figure out what that is.