Learning from failures is powerful. So fail often.
But just as important is learning from success.
Learning from Mistakes
Last week I played golf with a group of people I had never met before. Besides having a great time learning and in conversations, this let me observe our behavior.
In retrospect, this is nothing new. But the implications are helpful.
After messing up a shot, they would go back and review their swing. What went wrong? Some people get furious and swing around, others calmly check their elbow, head, stance, direction. This is necessary for improving your swing. Realizing something went wrong, then somehow telling yourself that it shouldn’t happen again. Whether your swing improves or not depends on your analysis.
Don’t Overlook the Good shots
On the other hand, if someone hits a good shot, rarely do they go back and see what went right. The reason is that hitting a good shot is assumed. If you hit, it should be a good shot. In reality this is not the case. There’s plenty of room for improvement in most shots. Analyzing what went right on those shots will improve future shots, and reduce the bad ones.
On Personal Growth
This analogy is obviously helpful in most situations. After meeting a new person, did you establish positive rapport or not? If yes, why, if not, why not?
When you look back on your successes, don’t just replay it in your mind, but analyze it like you would analyze your failures. There’s a lot there to learn from.