Three steps to learn from your failures
A couple of months ago, I re-found a game I had played before: Angry Birds. While wasting some time playing it, I suddenly realised that this game is a brilliant example of something fundamental: learning from failures.
In the game, you “shoot” different kinds of birds and try to kill the evil pigs with them, who oftentimes hide behind or below some obstacles. As usual, the difficulty level rises the longer you play. At higher levels, you will not be able to kill all targets on the first try.
So without much thinking, you start to analyse your previous attempts: shall I change the angle of my shot a bit? Could I use the specific tricks and properties of a bird differently? Should I aim at the pigs in a different sequence?
Step by step, try by try, you improve your results until you finally manage it and succeed.
Because this is a game, it is fun, and you will find yourself doing this over and over again.
But in our “real” life — our personal and professional life — we also encounter challenges of different difficulty levels all the time. And more often than we dare to admit, we fail.
One of the main pillars of the growth mindset theory (developed by Karol Dweck) is that we should learn to…
