Learning from mistakes is the most effective way to learn. This I knew and applied.
However, I have never thought in this way… sometimes really is necessary to to invest effort to understand your mistakes. I’ve never thought about mistakes like this before, great idea Mark….

I love when I read something I did not know, or something I do not agree, it helps me to grow. :)

Nice post. I would also add that failure is required. Without failure I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am today.

Very true sir.

The emotions connected to a failure limit us heavily in seeing the errors, and your point of looking at the past sure makes sense. When I have failed, I’ve lost focus on the cause for a few days, but then I am able to look back and start to understand where I went wrong. Being honest to myself about the source of one problem or another is tougher at first, but then leads me to improve in some aspect. It sure is painful for a period of time, though.

You are right about only asking others for their input if you really want it. Sometimes, we are not ready for the input, or are only looking for a certain type of input, and that isn’t realistic.

Probably the toughest part of learning from our own mistakes is accepting that we were foolish enough to make them. We tend to look at ourselves very highly, and so accepting that we made some immature or thoughtless errors is like a mental conflict, or provides cognitive dissonance, until we start to adjust our view of ourselves back to reality.