The smart way to learn from failure

 Many of us make mistakes on endless repeat – but new insights can help us to learn valuable lessons from our failures.

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In today’s motivational literature, failure is often viewed as something to be celebrated. Disappointments are an essential stepping stone to success; a turning point in our life story that will ultimately end in triumph. Rather than falling into despair, we are encouraged to “fail forward”.

If only it were so simple. In the past decade, a wealth of psychological research has shown that most people struggle to handle failure constructively. Instead, we find ways to devalue the task at which we failed, meaning that we may be less motivated to persevere and reach our goal. This phenomenon is known as the “sour-grape effect”. Alternatively, we may simply fail to notice our errors and blithely continue as if nothing has happened, something that prevents us from learning a better strategy to improve our performance in the future.

Inspirational speakers are fond of quoting the words of the novelist Samuel Beckett: “Fail again. Fail better”. But the truth is that most of us fail again and fail the same.

Recent research shows there are ways to avoid these traps. These solutions are often counterintuitive: one of the best ways of learning from your mistakes, for example, is to offer advice to another person who may be encountering similar challenges. By helping others avoid failure, it turns out, you can also enhance your own prospects of success.