Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the fail... — Roger von Oech

Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.

Author: Roger von Oech

Insight: Most of us treat failure like a door we've slammed shut—we'd rather not think about it again. But failure is actually full of information, if you're willing to look. When something doesn't work out, you've just eliminated one path, which means you're closer to finding the right one. That might sound like consolation prize thinking, but it's genuinely practical. The people who end up solving hard problems aren't usually the ones who got it right the first time; they're the ones who collected the most data about what doesn't work. Here's the tricky part, though: the second benefit only works if you actually try something different. It's easy to fail, feel defeated, and then do the exact same thing again, just slightly harder. Real learning means looking at what went wrong and genuinely changing your approach—maybe your timing was off, or your audience different than you thought, or you needed a totally different strategy. That shift in perspective is where failure becomes valuable instead of just painful. The people who seem fearless about trying new things aren't magical—they've just decided that being stuck is worse than being wrong. Once you reframe failure as research instead of rejection, it stops feeling like the end of the story.