14: Failure sucks, but instructs

Since you will fail when you take on the challenge of bringing something new in to the world, it’s useful to adopt the mantra of “Failure sucks but instructs”.  Repeat that mantra a few times, and then hark back to Raney’s Corollary:

you only learn when things start breaking

None of us want to fail.  But when we do, we have a choice to make:  we can choose to learn from the failure, or we can choose to avoid dealing with what the world is trying to tell us.  Time and time again, history shows us that innovators who get stuff done are also the ones who best learn from their failures, which may be legion.  Think James Dyson cranking out thousands of vacuum cleaner prototypes, the Wright brothers crashing their kites and gliders over and over, and even the rational marketers at Amazon hypothesizing and testing across multiple web platforms each and every day.   Each is a lesson in the power of success driven by cycles of failure coupled with learning.

Failure sucks, but instructs.  The wisdom is out there.  Can you accept it?

This is number 14 in a series of 21 principles of innovation.  Your feedback is most welcome.

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