The fear of failure can be paralyzing, keeping you from attempting your most important goals. Yet the successful among us have learned to embrace it and have learned how to fail well. They take a deliberate approach to turn setbacks into stepping stones.

Failure, properly understood, transforms from obstacle into accelerant on your path to success.

Hey there. It’s me, Kore. And you’re listening to Exercising Self-Control: From Fitness To Flourishing.

What does it mean to “fail well”? It means extracting maximum learning from setbacks while minimizing wasted effort and emotional toll. It transforms defeat into data, disappointment into direction.

Two stories from IBM, the global tech company, illustrate this principle perfectly:

* Thomas J. Watson Sr. once told a journalist: “If you want to be successful faster, you must double your rate of failure.”

* When a VP resigned after a $1 million project failure, Thomas J. Watson Jr. refused the resignation, saying, “Why would I accept this when I have just invested one million dollars in your education?” He understood that failure isn’t a loss but an investment in future success.

The Strategy To Fail Better

There is a strategy to learn from your failures.

Identify What Works

Even in failure, there are parts that succeeded. The Pareto principle reveals this: roughly 20% of your efforts typically generate 80% of your results. By identifying this vital 20%, you build incrementally rather than starting over.

Ask yourself:

* Which tactics resonated?

* Which relationships deepened?

* Which processes proved efficient?

These fragments become the foundation for your next attempt. This focused approach creates momentum where success becomes increasingly attainable because you’re not reinventing the wheel every time.

Iterate Rapidly

Speed matters. The faster you learn what isn’t working, the quicker you can adjust toward what does. This requires overcoming the paralysis that accompanies failure and returning to action as quickly as possible. Don’t wait for perfect conditions or complete understanding; move forward with what’s already clear.

Track your progress meticulously: document what you tried, what happened, and what changed. Awareness transforms confusion into clarity, enabling you to refine your path with agility. Each iteration adds to your knowledge, bringing you closer to the breakthrough.

Reframe Your Perspective

Each setback carries invaluable lessons. Viewing failures as gifts rather than defeats fundamentally shifts your growth trajectory. This isn’t toxic positivity; it’s pragmatism. A failed experiment teaches you what doesn’t work, eliminating one path and illuminating others.

Embrace the discomfort of mistakes. Profound learning often emerges from these uncomfortable spaces. When you stop resisting failure and start digging into its lessons, you discover the gold.

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Acknowledge the Emotional Weight

Failing well requires emotional honesty. Disappointment, frustration, and self-doubt are natural responses to setback. Acknowledge these feelings rather than trying to ignore them. Give yourself permission to feel discouraged for a time, then deliberately shift your focus to what you learned.

Don’t try to force positivity. Aim to process the emotional reality while refusing to let it paralyze you. The most resilient people aren’t those who never feel defeated. They’re those who feel it, process it, and move forward wiser than before.

Reflect Systematically

True learning isn’t mindless repetition. It’s a deliberate loop of action, reflection, and adaptation. After each attempt, pause. What assumptions proved wrong? What surprised you? What would you do differently? Discern what works from what doesn’t, then adjust accordingly.

This systematic approach compounds your knowledge over time, transforming scattered experiences into coherent understanding.

Learn from Others

Your journey is unique but collective human knowledge is vast and readily available. Experts, mentors, online resources, and historical examples furnish insights and principles that prevent you from repeating others’ mistakes. Why stumble where others have already found the path? Study how others navigated similar challenges. Their failures become your shortcuts.

A Fitness Example

Consider someone running their first marathon. They thought they trained thoroughly but still hit “the wall” around the 30 km mark, posting a terrible time as a result. They feel defeated. But failing well means extracting the lesson: their fueling strategy failed, not their capability.

They identify what worked (i.e. their pacing, their mental resilience) and adjust what didn’t (i.e. adding electrolytes, adjusting nutrition during training). They process the disappointment, then return to training with refined tactics. Six months later, they cross the finish line at a new personal best time. The failure revealed essential data that made success possible.

What You Can Do

Failing well isn’t a skill you develop by accident. It demands intention. This week, identify one recent setback. Learn from that failure.

* What worked?

* What didn’t?

* What were the emotions that were the result?

* What will you adjust?

* Document what you learned, then act on that.

Success doesn’t reward those who avoid failure. That is an impossible dream. Totally unrealistic. Success is the result of failing well by learning relentlessly and persevering intelligently.

That’s it for today. Catch you next time.

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