In the article, “We have been lying to ourselves about failure,” Kyla Haimovitz, psychology professor, at Stanford University who’s researched how discussion of failure can affect children’s motivation to learn, notes that it’s educationally valuable not to view “failure” and “success” as distinct states of being.
“Thinking about it as a continuum focuses people on the process of learning,” she says. “So when you make an error or succeed at something, it’s just one instance. It doesn’t say something about underlying stable traits: You can do it or you can’t do it, you’re good at math or bad at math, you’re a success or a failure. It’s just saying this is one step in the learning process.”
Astro Teller, the head of X (formerly Google X) which is affectionately nicknamed the “moonshot factory” shared in his TedTalk, “The unexpected benefit of celebrating failure,” that failure is actually when you know you are going in the wrong direction, but continue in that direction. The act of failing is neither here nor there.
Failure is instrumental in determining our fate. Failure accelerates our reconnection with our purpose and who we want to become. Sometimes we find out who we want to be by realizing who we don’t want to be.
In the article, “The Science Behind Failure: How It Actually Makes You Smarter” states, “It is true that failure is incredibly valuable, but perhaps not in the way you think…the right way to fail is far closer to the right way to learn.”
In learning, when we encounter new information or a new situation, it is essential that we come to the accurate conclusion. Is the conclusion rooted in fact and reality? Is the conclusion the most positive version of the facts? Failure is not the badge of honor that we need to wear, but the tool in which we achieve clarity into the path we need to journey upon to reach us, to be fully all of us.
#igniteyoursoul and utilize the tools you have at your disposal even if that tool is called failure.
Leland Learns 