Failing Better

You might find the name of this challenge strange. What’s so great about failing and how can you do it better?

Indeed, it may seem like the important milestones in life depend on your successes: your grades, your GPA, your degrees… Walk into a self-help section in a bookstore and you will likely find a plethora of exclamatory titles about how to succeed -- but probably not too many telling you how to fail.

Below is a Failure Wall created by others who have embarked on the Failing Better quests. You will return to this wall at the end of the challenge, but for now, consider the fact that failure is a common life experience we all share.

In the public radio news program "Here & Now" the head of a business discusses his implementation of a “failure wall” to motivate and inspire his employees. Listen to him describe how his employees reacted in the following segment.

1.) Describe a time when you failed and what you learned from that experience.

Now share your response with others on the Failure Wall. You do not have to include your name.

2.) Look at the other posts on the wall (click a post to make it bigger and use the arrows to click through them). Is there one in particular that resonates with you? Is there a quote that relates to your experience with failure? Pick one story or quote that stands out to you. Thinking back on the two quests in this challenge, how might you apply that quote to the failure you described above? Or how might you use what you’ve learned to “fail better” next time?