Good judgment comes from experience. And experience comes from bad judgment — from failures.The key question is how you respond, whether you learn from failure and rebound.
There’s no easy answer on how to learn from your mistakes that will work every time, but here is a little advice that might help. First use re-framing to stop thinking of your mistakes as failures. They can be more accurately described as opportunities for learning—people generally learn more from mistakes than they learn from successes. With each mistake, you can learn valuable information that can be used for future success. Next, maintain perspective and don’t take mistakes too seriously. Blaming others for our mistakes can be a defense mechanism for those who are harsh with themselves when we mess up—we stay in denial because we can’t take our own harsh self-condemnation. Be forgiving. Just changing your outlook on this can make it less threatening to recognize when you’re responsible or partially responsible for things going other than you’d planned. That will make you more able to learn from your mistakes. Ask for impartial opinions. Have a few trusted friends who will tell you the TRUTH, and who can see things from both sides. Then ask them what they see. Sometimes we’re too close to a situation to make sense of it at first, but an observer who isn’t so emotionally attached and who can deliver their opinion with love and tact is what we need to help us learn from our mistakes. Finally, congratulate yourself for whatever growth you’ve gained from dealing with each difficult situation you encounter and each mistake you make. Remember that these things add value to life as much as the more pleasant experiences we all value.
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”
―Albert Einstein
