Build Resilience to Future Failure by Writing a Summary of Failures
Listing your victories is a great way to build confidence, but it can also skew your idea of how you achieved success. Instead, listing your biggest failures will remind you of how you got to where you are and help you know what you need to be successful.
Everyone experiences setbacks in their lives. It is your ability to learn and overcome them that allows you to ultimately succeed. If you want to make the most of your failures, William S. Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company magazine, invites you to forget your words of praise for a few minutes and celebrate any major setbacks you’ve faced and experienced. Taylor explains in the Harvard Business Review :
In a world dominated by hyper-competition and intense pressures, where business breakthroughs and career progression require a willingness to take risks and ignore convention, the notion that anyone can achieve meaningful success without experiencing setbacks and frustrations seems hopelessly naive. A willingness to chronicle your failures helps build resilience that allows you to transcend them …
The idea for the failed resume comes from Melanie Stefan , who was then popularized by Johannes Haushofer , assistant professor of psychology at Princeton. Stefan explains that the traditional success story makes your failure invisible to you and others. So, when you really experience failure, you feel lonely and depressed. By exposing your failures openly, like the statistics of a professional athlete, you are forced to cope with your mistakes and make the necessary adjustments. Failure hurts, but a resume of failure can help you maintain perspective and develop the mental toughness you need to cope with future failures.
Write a Resume of Failure to Find Out What Makes You Successful | Harvard Business Review