Your failure advantage

- Part of any kind of growth is about pushing past barriers and entering unchartered territory. The same applies to developing a growth mindset. You're entering the unknown. Whenever you take on something new there'll be a period of trial and error as you put new knowledge and skills into practice. A side effect of this is the challenges you may face and the possibility that you may make mistakes, and you feel like you failed. The good news is you can turn mistakes, failure, and challenges into your advantage. It's all about changing your perspective to see things as part of the process of developing a growth mindset. Of course, learning new information, broadening your knowledge, and developing your skills can create huge rewards. And this process can at times be entirely smooth sailing. Or there may be a few bumps in the road. The key is to prepare yourself for potential challenges, and accept that you may fail as you start to put new ideas and skills into practice. You also need to understand making decisions that don't always pay off are just a normal part of the process. In fact, rather than just accepting mistakes may occur, if you can learn to celebrate failure you'll create a way of thinking that helps you to thrive. This means you give yourself the psychological tools to cope with obstacles and learn to turn challenging situations into opportunities to grow. Learning how to create a continuous development outlook will help you to hone your growth mindset. The idea is to create a process whereby you expand your knowledge, broaden your skills, test new approaches, review progress, and make tweaks to enhance your performance in the future. By viewing this as a process, almost like a scientific experiment, it helps take the emotion out of it when things don't go to plan. This provides you with the opportunity to objectively view your efforts as an experiment. And it can reduce the stigma and emotional response we often associate with making mistakes or even failing. The next time you plan to expand your knowledge and put what you've learned into practice, take some time to create your own test experiment process. First, get really clear on what you're testing. What skills are you developing? Or what knowledge are you putting into action? And most importantly think about why this is important for you. What do you hope to achieve? Second, set a review process. Periodically check in and review what has worked well and what hasn't worked so well. Remember to try and be as objective as possible. Celebrate the successes, but also celebrate the fact you've tried if things don't go to plan. Third, consider how you can refine your approach. What tweaks could you make? What did you learn in the process that will help you to achieve a better result in the future? What won't you try again, because it just didn't work that well? Finally, plan how you'll repeat this really simple process again and again. Block out time in your diary. Commit to creating your own review process. Understanding things won't always go to plan, creating a really strong review process, and treating your growth and development as a scientific experiment will help you to develop a successful growth mindset. It will also set you up on the path of lifelong learning, helping you to turn challenges into opportunities to learn.