Nobody likes the idea of falling short, but in order to keep moving forward, we need to be able to learn from our mistakes. This means being able to accept failure instead of fleeing from the discomfort it causes.

Learning from our mistakes can be critical for our success. A 2015 US study, for example, found that serial entrepreneurs were not only more likely to change industries if a venture failed, but were more likely to fail in the new industry too, not least because they were new to it, lacked expertise, and assumed that what did work in the old field should work in the new. It’s easy to get stuck in a pattern of doing things automatically, but what really helps us develop is being able to step back and identify what we can do differently in the future based on the mistakes we made in the past.

Seeing straight

Humans are prone to a particularly awkward cognitive error: we see what we expect to see rather than what’s actually there. “Schema theory” argues that this can even include what’s right in front of us, from minor mistakes such as putting the cereal box in the fridge because we were thinking about the cupboard, to fatal mistakes such as a nurse attaching a patient to the wrong drip because of nerves or the pressure of the job. The less reflective we are, the more we fail—and we need to be able to learn the right lessons from our failures.

Defensive thinking

If we’re intelligent, surely we should be good at learning from mistakes? In fact, according to business specialist Chris Argyris, smart people often lack this skill. The problem is one of mental habits. High achievers usually succeed at what they attempt. As a result, they don’t experience failure on a regular basis and so don’t have much practice at learning from it. Many of us are problem-oriented: if something is wrong, our instinct is to fix it as quickly as possible and move on. This may feel efficient, but it doesn’t help us examine the causes, which could include the need to revise our own approach (see “Learning loops,”).

When we fail to get the result we want, we tend to go into defensive reasoning. We tried, it didn’t work, and we don’t want it to be our fault, so we redirect our energy into proving that it wasn’t. This is a sure way to shut down our problem-solving abilities.

Learning loops

Business theorist Chris Argyris points to two different ways of learning from mistakes, the single and double loop. A single loop can be efficient if you’re pursuing a specific goal, but if you want to broaden your mental scope, it’s better to add another loop to your thinking that looks at the bigger picture as well—not just whether you did a particular task “by the book,” but also examining the nature of the task itself. Argyris uses the example of seeing yourself as a thermostat set to 68°F (20°C), and imagines that it could be programmed to add in another level of calculation.

Changing habits

While we like to think of ourselves as consistent, Argyris argues that our principles tend to be undermined by a pattern of thinking that aims to:

• Keep us in control
• Maximize “winning” and minimize “losing”
• Suppress negative feelings
• Be “rational,” which, in practice, means evaluating our behavior on our own terms.

At their core, all of these elements are about avoiding anxiety and shame, and they don’t help us to improve. To learn from setbacks, we need to embrace vulnerability and cross-check our actions and assumptions to make sure we’re not denying ourselves an important learning opportunity. We all make mistakes: the key to success is to accept them when they happen, understand what caused them and, if necessary, modify our approach. If we can do this, the mistakes themselves may matter much less.