Best way to learn? Feel the burn

Maybe you always wanted to play in the big leagues, but never quite made the grade. Or maybe you had your eye on the top jobs, but always fell at the final hurdle. Having a clear goal is good, and failure is bad, right?

Well, not necessarily. We’re here to tell you that failure’s OK – it’s giving up that’s bad.

Research shows that how you respond to setbacks is the strongest predictor of your future success – and has far more impact than your raw talent or intelligence. And that means there’s one quality that sets the winners apart from the also-rans – grit.

“What goals have you quietly given up on because of how impossible they may seem? And what would happen if you approached them without the story that you’re not ready, you’re not smart enough or you’re not that kind of person? Too many people give up. Grit is about staying the course,” explains Zahrai.

Failure is a feature, not a bug

We need to ditch the word failure from our vocabulary, argues Zahrai, not because failing is bad – but because the side-order of shame and fear that comes with it holds us back.

In other words, we need to show some grit.

And the good news is that grit is not a personality trait – it’s actually something you can cultivate. In her 2016 book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, psychologist Angela Duckworth defines the quality as “passion and sustained persistence applied toward long-term achievement, with no particular concern for rewards or recognition along the way”.

She argues that when you begin to focus on the process – about what you can learn and how you can grow from it – grit allows you to reframe your failures as an essential component of success.

Train your focus on personal growth rather than performance, and failure becomes a feature – not a bug.

Analysis not paralysis

How best to incorporate failure? Zahrai reckons the old quote ‘you don’t win or lose, you win or learn’ is the right idea. That means it’s a choice, she says. “You can choose to learn from every misstep, every mistake.” So, you should be curious about how and why things have gone wrong – to slash procrastination, improve short-term outcomes and ultimately spur you on towards long-term goals.

And instead of only documenting successes, try tracking the effort you apply to each task or project. This ‘postmortem’ process – the all-important act of reflection – allows us to see our progress and to make adjustments for the future. A little analysis, it turns out, can defeat paralysis.

Feel the fear, and learn anyway

In a perfect world, we would have no concept of failure. Think about a toddler learning to walk. They fall down and get back up countless times, with no sense that a mistake signals the end of effort – or the impossibility of their goal.

“Somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten our true nature, which is to get back up and persist,” says Zahrai. “As adults, we allow the humiliation, the fear of rejection, the potential for criticism from others, to prevent us from even trying.”

And then there’s the hurt. A 2003 study by UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman found that the same brain regions are activated by physical pain as when people experience social rejection. This explains why failure hurts. Even the thought of it hurts.

Face shame head on

So how do we overcome such powerful emotional responses?

One approach is to face shame head on. Be vulnerable, by admitting and sharing failures with other people. In other words, don’t suffer in silence.

We could also try ‘inversion thinking’, a technique used in project management and elite performance that visualises all the scenarios that could go wrong, and works through the solutions. It channels our brain’s capacity to catastrophise into something more balanced and productive.

Swimmer Michael Phelps famously employed this ritual before competitions. He ran the whole gamut in his mind – goggles snapping, cap coming loose, a late start – to prepare for the unexpected. Then, at the 2008 Olympics, it happened: his goggles filled with water during the butterfly final, and he swam 175m of the 200m ‘blind’. But, prepared, he won the race, an Olympic gold medal and achieved a new world record.

Your competitive edge

So instead of trying to ignore the risks, maybe we should listen to them. “When your mind has a plan for failure, it frees up capacity for boldness,” says Shadé. “It makes risk feel manageable instead of paralysing.”

It all comes back to that inherent determination.

“Grit is what helps you push through the setbacks, stay resilient in the face of uncertainty and, importantly, maintain a sense of hope and optimism when certainty feels out of reach. It’s not just a nice-to-have anymore. It’s your competitive edge in a world that’s constantly changing.”