Feedback and Failure

Continuing yesterday’s thoughts, if we choose to accept undesirable results as feedback (rather than failure) we position ourselves to learn from the experience rather than being beaten by it. We come out of the lesson better equipped for success than we were before the “failure.” Although the unpleasant outcome wasn’t what we would have chosen, we can be better off for it because now we know what can be improved, what must be changed, and what might not need be done at all.

Samuel Smiles once wrote, “We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.” With this perspective, failure can illuminate the path ahead rather than block it. If we are willing to search out the lessons, failure is not the stop sign that many will see, but rather a signpost showing us the way.

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