1/ It is often said that failure is the key to success. However, it is not failure that helps people forward. It is their ability to learn and recover from it.
2/ A mistake is defined as an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong. The definition of failure is a lack of success, and success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.
3/ So saying failure leads to success is saying there is a causality between a lack of success and… more success? This is a paradox.
4/ Making a mistake is not a positive thing in itself. Mistakes can have extreme consequences, for instance death. Making as much mistakes as possible will not lead to accomplishment.
5/ However it also goes the other way around. The absence of failure does not equate to accomplishment. Making as little mistakes as possible means reducing risk to a minimum, resulting in the inability to take advantage of opportunity.
6/ Often the cost of avoiding failure is greater than the negative impact that it has.
7/ It is much like the human body. Catching a disease is not inherently a positive thing, potentially causing damage or death. But catching multiple diseases that have a limited and temporary effect can strengthen the immune system.
8/ Being in an environment with organisms/substances that can cause slight harm increases the ability to identify and defend against harmful sources in the future, and not being subjected to harmful sources results in a weak defense and a greater potential danger in the future.
9/ Extrapolating this to failure in general, mistakes generally have a negative primary outcome, but can have many secondary – often unexpected – outcomes. These secondary outcomes can be positive.
10/ Furthermore, apart from their short term outcomes, mistakes can have many different long term consequences. These too can be both positive and negative.
11/ Going through the process of making a mistake and being subjected to its outcome can increase the ability to indicate future sources of failure and strengthen the ability to cope with negative outcomes.
12/ Experiencing failure can provide insight in behavior and decisions that are the root of making mistakes. Thus, failure can help reveal ways to accomplishment.
13/ So in order for failure to lead to success there has to be a structure of feedback loops in place that draw improvement from it.
14/ With this mechanism, making mistakes within a certain range of negative outcome creates an environment where trial and error leads to increasing degrees of accomplishment, and thus to success.
15/ Basically this is a nuanced version of: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
16/ What constitutes as a mistake depends on the subjective identification of a certain outcome of a decision. Failure, as a lack of accomplishment, is identified by a comparison of planned objectives and goals with realized results.
17/ A certain degree of failure is a given in life. It is like a force that is not always easy to measure. It is influenced by many other variables and principles such as opportunity costs, decision theory and (the absence of) both risk and opportunities.
18/ Applying the above to an example, let’s take an individual that chose education A from A and B. This comes at the direct cost of time, effort and energy. It also comes with the opportunity cost of not being able to go through education B.
19/ Dropping out would constitute as a failure, because the realized result is not in accordance with what was initially aimed to accomplish.
20/ However, this mistake may also have positive outcomes such as new friendships or gaining knowledge and skills.
21/ Also, with the right self-evaluation and feedback process in place it can lead to the consequence of becoming aware of education C and with that, eventual accomplishment and success.
22/ So dropping out of school (failure) is the result of a mistake (choosing the wrong education) that can eventually lead to new paths of accomplishment.
23/ This shows that it is not the failure itself that leads to success, but the combination of identifying new possibilities and being able to take advantage of them more effectively.
