TL;DR Learning how to fail is key to being successful.
I had a good talk a few weeks ago with my wife about failure.
She had seen a post about, how a family at the dinner table talked about “How did you fail today?” and then they would talk about what they could do to succeed the next time.
It was a positive and safe environment where they supported and helped each other to grow and succeed.
They understood learning how to fail was an intrical part of learning how to succeed.
I think our culture teaches us that failure is bad and success is good, where I think they are part of the same process.
I think failing is an important skill you need to learn, you need to be able to fail, even be a serial failure to reach your ambitious goals. If you are not failing you are not trying things that are challenging enough.
I have failed multiple IT certifications, I am sure I will fail more in the future. When I do I sulk for a day or two, I regroup and then I use what I learned on this failure to do better next time.
I have used this Thomas A. Edison quote before when someone asked him about his many failures not making a functional light bulk: ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’
(If this is accurate, if it was 500, 1,000 or 10,000 is irrelevant, the point is the same).
What do you think about failure?
