How to overcome your mistakes?

More than 400 people were recruited for a 2019 study to learn an enigmatic, made-up language. Three pairs of runes were given to the participants to answer. For instance, which of these two characters symbolizes an animal? They were then questioned about the same rune pairs with questions reversed, such as which of these two runes denotes a non-living object, following a brief intermission. There was a catch to this game, though: the meanings of the runes in round two were decided by the respondents' responses in round one. During the first round, participants were either required to fail every question, or had all of their responses marked as accurate regardless of what they answered. This ensured that each player got the same amount of information at the break, and that in round two, they were actually playing. However, in spite of this level playing field, the first round's winners ascended to the top, while the people predicted to fail continued to fail. Failure is frequently characterized as a learning moment—a necessary misstep on the path to progress. But it's not always easy to learn from our mistakes, particularly when those mistakes are disheartening, overpowering, or just plain unclear.

What then stands in the way of us mastering from our mistakes? The most evident obstacle to learning from failure is probably its agony. Most people want to believe that they are capable and competent, and failing puts that belief in jeopardy. After taking part in a replication of the rune study, individuals in the failure group reported significantly lower levels of self-confidence in a survey. It's easy to write this pain off as a passing phase. However, some research indicates that people's brains frequently stop processing new information when they feel hopeless or incompetent. This implies that your capacity to learn may be compromised if there is a significant enough threat to your sense of self-worth. Your ability to accept failure, though, also depends on how you feel about the work at hand. Researchers polled a sample of American students enrolled in beginning and advanced French courses in a 2011 study. These students answered a questionnaire indicating whether they preferred a teacher who focused on their accomplishments and strengths or one who called attention to their errors and addressed their deficiencies. Overall, the responses indicated that advanced students were more willing to receive critical feedback, but beginner students preferred positive reinforcement. A few explanations have been proposed by researchers to account for these findings.

Beginners may need praise to stay motivated because they are still figuring out whether learning French is enjoyable and whether they want to pursue it further. However, since advanced students have already made an investment, they might want to advance as quickly as possible. Since failure is a necessary part of the process of becoming an expert, the advanced students might have developed a greater tolerance for error. However, learning from your successes is typically far easier than learning from your mistakes, regardless of your level of experience. Consider receiving your exam grade back, for instance. If you did well on the test, you can fairly assume that you made wise decisions about what, when, and how much to study. You can then repeat those decisions for the subsequent test. If you didn't succeed, there could be a variety of reasons why. It's possible that you studied the incorrect material, didn't study for long enough, or did everything correctly but the test covered material that wasn't expected of you. It's challenging to figure out how to get better in situations like this because it's not obvious exactly what went wrong. It's only natural to want to grow from our mistakes, and developing resilience and a growth mindset have many benefits. But it can be simple to forget all of your successes if you become fixated on your failures. Furthermore, enhancing your positive actions rather than concentrating on your negative ones may be more productive.