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In life we tend to study only successful people, companies, governments and so on. Even when we study the lives of these “successes” we tend to gloss over their mistakes, indiscretions and failures. Take for example, Abraham Lincoln who is considered one of America’s greatest presidents. He had a number of failures on his road to the White House (listed here ). He lost numerous political races and even had a nervous breakdown at one point.
So what’s the point? Perhaps we can learn just as much or more from a person’s successes as from their failures. All of us have faced and will face again, both success and failure in school, work or life. Therefore we need to accept that both will be a part of our lives. Furthermore we need to learn how to take our mistakes and turn them into successes. Take for example Donald Trump, he’s a multi-millionaire who has been enormously successful in business. However, he wasn’t always a success. When the real estate market tanked in the early 90’s, his fortune evaporated and he was left owing over $900 million dollars to banks. He once remarked that he drove past a homeless man one day and said ‘that man is $900 million dollars richer than me!’. He didn’t let his failure become associated with who he was. Instead he kept working and learned from past mistakes. This is something we should all aspire to. This is why I recommend that after every group project that the group gets together and fills out a lessons learned document. This serves to document your successes and mistakes and understand why they occurred.
Finally, this post was motivated by a great speech by J.K. Rowling who was the graduation speaker at Harvard in 2008. Her speech discusses the power of going your own way in life and what failure has to teach us. She certainly would know what both failure and success feel like. She wrote Harry Potter while almost homeless and broke. It is now a billion dollar industry. Please check out her speech;
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