089 Five skills you can learn through failure

You can’t avoid it, so you might as well get better by it. In this episode, we throw around the F-word—failure—and talk about the five skills you can learn from it.

This week’s Inspire Me quote is from Winston Churchill:

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

Whether we like it or not, we’re going to experience failure. It comes when we “do” and when we “don’t do.” How do we maintain enthusiasm in the midst of failure? By focusing on the five benefits it brings if we let it:

1. Resiliency: the ability to rise again.
2. Risk-tolerance: the ability to experiment.
3. Reflectiveness: the ability to accurately diagnose.
4. Relatability: the ability to connect to others openly, honestly.
5. Reframing: the ability to see bridges and connections to new opportunities.

Quotes from Leary and Armin:

• “The more you avoid failure, the more likely you are to get it.” —Leary
• “Failure is part of the DNA of the learning process. You can’t learn something if you don’t fail at it.” —Leary
• “‘It’s not about how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can take a hit and keep moving forward.'” —Armin quoting Rocky
• “Get up. Move on. Because God’s not done with you yet. That’s the first skill we have to develop from failure.” —Leary
• “You’ll keep failing if you keep doing the same ventures… but… you[‘ll] find a better way to do that same thing better each time. You become more efficient. You learn how to expedite the process. You learn to foresee the problems coming.” —Armin
• “It’s critical for us to develop the mindset of a learner.” —Leary
• “If we want to really get the most from an experience… we have to study it.” —Leary
• “The very fact of failure can be a bridge to new opportunities.” —Leary

This week’s Challenge Me:

What was the last failure you remember? Pick one of these skills and ask yourself the corresponding question(s).

• Resiliency: How do I react to set-back? What’s my recovery time?
• Risk-tolerance: What can I test and how can I test it?
• Reflectiveness: What habits do I adopt to diagnose my condition and my approach?
• Relatability: How forthcoming am I about the challenges and failures I’ve experienced?
• Reframing: What assets did I acquire from this experience that will make the next one less challenging?

Resources mentioned or related to this podcast that may be helpful to you:

• Leary Gates’ blog post, “Five ways to fail better“
• Episode 81, “How to take risks (safely)“
• Episode 24, “Why now is the best time to start journaling“