We don’t make mistakes, we learn

…life.

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To live, to learn, a life long.

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

—Henry Ford

Success is stumbling from one failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

—Winston Churchill

There are only two mistakes you can make:

1. Not learning (but denying, blaming, justifying, obligating; see responsibility).
2. Not asking for or giving help (see six rules to simplify).

Therefore:

Define and reward smart failures and make your apporach to risk taking transparent. Cultivate intelligent disobedience.

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The sooner we fail, the sooner we succeed. Don’t be afraid to pull the andon cord.

To process

• Unbeatable Mind, Mike Divine; the part on failure.
  • Ultimately there’s no such thing as failure, just decisions; some good, others not.
  • A familiar Navy SEAL value is stated as, “Failure is not an option.” This motivates to endure and states the value of not-quitting.
  • At SEALFIT Academy we design “failure” into the training so the trainees understand that there’s no such thing as failure, just learning. There are a series of lessons to be learned on the art of mastering. The more painful the lesson, the more valuable the skill or personal attribute you seek to master. We don’t want our trainees to fear failure. Trainees should embrace failure as a critical component of the trial and error growth process.

Sources

• HBR » To Increase Innovation, Take the Sting Out of Failure
• InfoQ » Steve Peha » The Fail-Safe Organization
• AardRock » Martien van Steenbergen » Joseph Perline's three rules
• YouTube » Famous Failures
• HBR » Heidi Grant Halvorson » Celebrate the Mistakes that Don't Happen
• Co.Exist » Neal Ungerleider » How FAILFaire Turns Epic Fails Into Successes
• HBR » Jason Seiken » How I Got My Team To Fail More
• iDoneTHis » Janet Choi » Failure & Cake: A Guide to Spotify’s Psychology of Success