You either win or you lose.
—Eh, we can do better…
You either win or you learn.
—Better. But, not as good as it could be…
You either learn or you don’t learn.
—That feels pretty solid.
Because if you don’t learn when you win you’re doing it wrong.
And learning from failures is talked about so much it’s essentially cliché at this point.
It’s worth remembering that what’s required to maximally squeeze the sweet learning juice from every experience isn’t what’s natural. Reacting emotionally to wins and losses is what’s natural.
Wins lead to celebration parties and losses lead to pity parties—and both tend to distract us from our work (and its improvement).
If maximally learning from every experience is important to us then we need to consistently prioritize a dedicated chunk of time to “juicing” each one.
Time when we can carefully reflect on what went well, what we could’ve done better, and how we can promptly implement our learnings into our lives.
Because the reality is this: experience is not the best teacher—learned from experience is.
If you’re winning and losing and not learning—you’re losing.
If you’re learning and learning and not letting winning and losing discourage or distract you from continuing to try—you’re winning.