John Maxwell wrote a wonderful book that we all need to read entitled Failing Forward.
Failing Forward tells you how to look at life’s setbacks and learn from your mistakes. The basic steps to moving on and failing forward are:
- Realize there is one major difference between average people and achievers. The difference is in how they respond to failure.
- Learn a new definition of failure.
- Remove the “you” from failure. Don’t take it personally.
- Take action and reduce your fear.
- Change your response to failure by accepting responsibility.
- Don’t let failure from outside get inside you.
- Say good-bye to yesterday.
- Change yourself, and your world changes.
- Get over yourself and start giving yourself.
- Find the benefit in every bad experience.
- If at first you do succeed, try something harder.
- Learn from a bad experience and make it a good experience.
Do you see any of these that could be applied to teaching? During these weeks between last year and the one to come, take sufficient time to reflect on past failures.
- Don’t excuse them, but don’t embellish them either.
- Refine your list to those things for which you were solely responsible.
- Consider what you should have done.
- Determine what you will do in the future when the situation happens again.
These simple four steps can help turn the failures of the past into successes in the future. And, when that happens, you fail forward!
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Aloha Dean,
JJLer Benjamin Whitehouse recently wrote a posting for our Ho‘ohana community sister site, Joyful Jubilant Learning, which he called, Failure- the teacher we dare not name.
His title alone intrigues as a possible connection! He tells his personal story there, one in which he definitely does “Find the benefit in every bad experience” as you suggest here.
Just in…… failing doesn’t make you a failure. Giving up, accepting your failure, refusing to try again, does! Richard Exley
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