How to Leverage Your Successes and Failures to Your Advantage

Life is easy if you recognize what works and what doesn’t work, and then apply that knowledge to the future. You become more capable, knowledgeable, and powerful with each passing day. You evolve into a highly successful and capable person. 

However, most people fail to use their experiences to their advantage. They avoid failure and examining those times they do fail. Success is seen as a time for celebrating, not learning. But this is a great mistake. The rules of life are revealed to you each day. 

Imagine if you used every experience to become an enhanced version of yourself. 

Imagine if you learned from every mistake and every success. What if you never repeated a mistake and made the most of your successes? How would your life change in a year? In 10 years? The results could be astounding! 

Follow this process to make your successes and failures work for you: 

1. Examine your past. Think back on your life and make a list of all your greatest successes and failures. Consider your work, educational, and relationship experiences. Think about those times you made plans and came up short or experienced considerable success. 

• Consider why you were successful. What made you successful? 
• Consider why you failed. What can you learn from that that you can apply to the future? 

2. Determine your purpose for the day. Successes and failures are often the result of little successes and failures each day. Setting a standard for the day provides a benchmark for determining your success that day. 

3. Determine your long-term goals. You need long-term goals to measure your successes and failures against. Long-term goals also allow you to plan your day more effectively. 

4. Review your day. At the end of the day, review how well you stuck to your plan. What did you succeed at today? What did you fail at? What were the factors that led to those successes and failures? 

5. Determine ways to improve. After reviewing your day, what changes do you want to make for tomorrow? 

• How can you be better tomorrow than you were today? 
• What can you do tomorrow that will make you 1% better than you were today? 
• Make a new plan for tomorrow that includes the lessons that you identified today. 

6. Test your hypotheses. Spend a day executing your new plan. Did you have a better day? What were your failures today? What were your successes? What can you do to have an even better day tomorrow? 

7. Ask friends and family for help. Ask your friends and family to help you identify why you’ve been successful or unsuccessful in the past. What are the ideas you hear over and over? How can you apply this information to your life? 

8. Keep a journal. A journal can be a great tool for making the most of your successes and failures. It’s natural to write about your successes and failures in your journal. You’ll learn things from your past and your present that can be applied to your future. 

Are you more or less successful than you were five years ago? The most common answer is, “About the same.” But this is a tragic response. In the last five years, you’ve had the opportunity to learn from each day. You could have improved by a small amount each day and be much more effective today than you were then. 

Each day provides you with information that can be used to enhance your approach to life. Leverage your successes and failures to become the most successful version of yourself.