Here are our Failures, and What We Learned from Them

Everyone makes mistakes. The good part about mistakes is the opportunity we have to learn from them. It's sometimes harder to learn from our own mistakes, but it is possible with the right mindset. Let’s talk about that!



I'm going to start off with a few mistakes I can retrospectively see now. You know what they say, hind sight is 20/20.

• Being too comfortable in a niche
• Sales team overpromising and underperforming (ouch)
• De-valuing our work

These are just 3 big examples, but let's dive into what really matters - taking accountability and learning from these mistakes. 



There's a difference between accountability and blame.

Accountability is the process of taking responsibility for your actions, while blame is assigning responsibility for someone else's actions. But what does this mean?

• Accountability is about learning and improving. It's an active process: you look at what happened, why it happened, and how to improve in the future. You take initiative in resolving issues that arise because of your mistakes—you don't wait for someone else to fix them on your behalf.
• Blame is passive; you sit back while others tell you what went wrong and how they think you should have done things differently (or better). You accept their assessment without question—and then nothing changes!

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You can't create a plan for mistakes you haven't made yet.

You can't know what you don't know. You can't have a plan to avoid mistakes if you haven't made them yet, because there's no way for you to know how it will affect your business. And even then, it's rare that someone makes the same mistake twice—the second time around we usually learn from our first mistake and make an adjustment or two. This is why people like Elon Musk, who are at the forefront of technology and innovation always seem so great: they're constantly making new mistakes! And because these mistakes are happening in uncharted territory (and sometimes literally on Mars), there's no way to predict how those mistakes will affect their businesses or lives until after the fact when they've had some time to reflect on what happened. While there are many things we can do ahead of time in preparation for future challenges and pitfalls, ultimately they won't help unless we actually dive into them first hand so as not only get some experience under our belts but also better understand how best practices should change as technology advances further into unknown territories where nothing has been done before before."

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We are all learning and growing from our mistakes all the time, even when it doesn't feel like it.

If you've ever made a mistake, don't beat yourself up about it. Mistakes are a natural part of learning and growing. And even if they feel like the opposite of growth, mistakes can be opportunities for personal development:

• Mistakes can help us learn about ourselves. What is our internal thought process when we make a mistake? How does it make us feel? What do those feelings mean? By paying attention to our emotional responses we learn more about ourselves than if we didn't make any mistakes at all!
• Mistakes can help us learn about the world around us by allowing us to ask questions and seek answers. For example: If I had known that my friend was allergic to peanuts before I ate them in front of him/her and caused hives on his/her face, what else would I have done differently today? Would someone else have eaten them instead? Could this problem have been avoided altogether outside the context of friendship (i.e., with strangers or acquaintances)?

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Making amends is not the same as making excuses.

Making amends is not the same as making excuses.

Making amends is about taking responsibility for your actions.

When you make excuses, you're trying to avoid responsibility or get out of trouble. You may even have a good excuse for what happened, but that doesn't mean it's all okay now—and it definitely doesn't mean that whatever happened wasn't wrong in the first place. Making amends means working hard to make things right: fixing what was broken and apologizing for any harm you caused another person or group of people (or animals!).

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Your mistakes can teach you a lot more than your successes.

Mistakes can be a good thing. If you’re an entrepreneur, your mistakes may be the most memorable part of your career.

When we make mistakes and take ownership of them, it can give us a better understanding of ourselves. For example, if you struggle to work with others and always get frustrated when they don’t work as hard as you do (and don't listen to your ideas), then learning how to collaborate will help you understand what drives people, so that in the future when someone doesn't want to implement something that makes perfect sense for them (because it's not their idea), you won't get upset about it; instead, you'll try harder at communicating why it matters so much and why they should care about implementing this idea into action in order for both parties involved (you included) see value from this new way of working together!

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Nobody's perfect, so don't let being imperfect get in the way of your progress.

Nobody's perfect, so don’t let being imperfect get in the way of your progress.

If you want to be successful at anything, you can't learn from success. Instead, you have to learn from failure—or as I call it: “Failing with style.” That's because mistakes are a part of life and everyone makes them (even if they don't admit it). So if you're making mistakes and not learning from them, then what's the point?

The most important thing is that when you make a mistake or fail at something, don't give up! Mistakes are usually more painful for those around us than for ourselves—which means there will always be someone willing to help us pick up our pieces and move on.

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Conclusion

As with many things in life, the key to learning from mistakes is to not let them get in the way of moving forward. The more you can accept that mistakes are part of the process, and embrace them as learning opportunities, the more likely it is that you'll be able to overcome whatever obstacle comes your way next time around.