Learning From Past Success
The ability to learn from our past mistakes and move on with a better understanding, perspective, and knowledge is vital for our growth. We are often bombarded by pieces of advice on learning from our mistakes, but failures are not the only teacher - learning from our successes is just as essential for growth. Constructive or positive feedback can help you understand areas you need to improve on while reinforcing the positives in your work/effort.
Learning from success is a process that needs to become part of an organisation’s culture. During work meetings, instead of focusing on what went wrong every day, ensure that your reports shed some light on what went right too - even a “disastrous event” is bound to have a couple of small wins.
If you constantly focus on the mistakes, it could create a negative environment where people are afraid or have a misconception to share their successes as it may come off as bragging. Understanding how you achieved success is more important than the achievement itself as you can learn from it.
Here are a few tips on how we can learn and grow from past successes:
1. Review yourself- what worked and why?
Highlighting our failure can leave us feeling defeated. We should feel empowered to self-reflect and review ourselves. Pay equal attention to our strengths as we would our weaknesses.
For example, if you excel at work, but your health is a little rocky, you could apply the positive lessons from your work to other areas of your life that might need improvement.
Keep a journal or list down everything you’re proud of as well as positive feedback from others that you can easily refer to. This way, you can learn more from your successes and remember them too.
2. Ask questions
Don’t be afraid to ask questions or feedback from others. This way, you will receive constructive feedback that also includes positive feedback.
Also, don’t hesitate to follow up with additional questions to understand what you did that was good.
At the same time, it is important to note that success in the past, doesn’t necessarily mean success in the future.
3. Give back
No matter how successful you are, remember that success is rarely an individual achievement. It is important to recognise, appreciate and give back to those who have helped you achieve this success. Be it your family, friends, teammates, boss, or even just someone who supported you.
Don't forget to always stay humble while learning from your successes.
Resilience is not solely taught from failure so don’t forget to equally learn from past successes too. Embrace your wins!
