Everyone always talks about how you’ll learn more from your failures than you will from your successes.
I don’t think this has to be the case. I think that we usually learn more from failures, because we’re forced to. Either we learn from it or we fail again. There’s often not as much of a choice. But I think we can learn just as much from success, but we never take the time to do this.
Think about it. Last time you failed or did something wrong, you probably thought about it after and you’re going to try to act differently in the future. But when was the last time you reflected on what went well and asked why it went well? It’s probably been a long time since you’ve done this.
My solution: Think about and learn from failures AND successes.
But how? Well I’ve just recently started something to try to capture more of this learning. I want to take time every day and think about what I’ve done and how I can learn from it.
I created an attached document that I am filling out every day. And at the end of the week, I’m going to do a summary of it in each of the categories. See the attached document for my sheet.
My fill-in-the-blanks:
What I Did Today: All activities or things I’ve done in the day. It helps in filling in the rest.
Observed: What did I observe around me. How others interacted, things I noticed, etc.
Learned Generally: This is for anything I learned that wasn’t a failure or success. Could just be an insight or something.
Learned from Failures: What I learned from messing up and failing
Learned from Successes: What I learned from the things that went well and I succeeded in
Action Steps: Pressing things that now need action. Keep this part small or you’ll create a huge to-do list you’ll never get to.
How God’s Character was Revealed: This line was a suggestion by my dad, and I really like it. It’s so important to see who God is and how He’s revealed in all aspects of life. This helps me reflect on how God was with me and gives me new insights into how He cares for me.
Now I should mention that I’m just starting to do this myself, so I may change it in the future. I’ve really enjoyed doing it so far, and I’ve learned a lot. The biggest barrier to me daily doing this is running out of time. My solution: do it throughout the day. Then it’s not too much at once.
I’d really encourage you to try this for ONE WEEK. Give it a shot. Print out 8 copies of it (one for every day and one for summarizing the week).
Do you have any thoughts on this? Comment below!