Learning From Past Success

Learning from your past mistakes and moving on with a better understanding, perspective, and knowledge is vital for our growth. We are often bombarded with advice on learning from our mistakes, but failures are not the only teacher - learning from your successes is just as essential for growth. Constructive or positive feedback can help you understand areas you need to improve while reinforcing the positives in your work/effort.

Learning from success is a process that needs to become part of an organisation’s culture. During work meetings, instead of focusing on what went wrong every day, ensure that your reports shed some light on what went right, too - even a “disastrous event” is bound to have a couple of small wins.

Constantly focusing on your mistakes could create a negative environment where you are afraid or have a misconception about sharing your successes, which may come off as bragging. Understanding how you achieved success is more important than the achievement itself, as you can learn from it.

Here are a few tips on how we can learn and grow from past successes:

1. Review yourself- what worked and why?

• Highlighting our failure can leave us feeling defeated. We should feel empowered to self-reflect and review ourselves. Pay equal attention to our strengths as we would our weaknesses.
• For example, if you excel at work but your health is a little rocky, you could apply the positive lessons from your work to other areas of your life that might need improvement.
• Keep a journal or list down everything you’re proud of and positive feedback from others that you can easily refer to. This way, you can learn more from your successes and remember them.

2. Ask questions

• Don’t be afraid to ask questions or get feedback from others. This way, you will receive constructive feedback that also includes positive feedback.
• Also, don’t hesitate to ask additional questions to understand what you did that was good.
• At the same time, it is important to note that success in the past doesn’t necessarily mean success in the future.

3. Give back

• No matter how successful you are, remember that success is rarely an individual achievement. It is important to recognise, appreciate and give back to those who have helped you achieve this success. Be it your family, friends, teammates, boss, or even someone who supported you. 
• Don't forget to always stay humble while learning from your successes.

Resilience is not solely taught from failure, so don’t forget to learn from past successes. Embrace your wins!