You learn more from failures than successes

You may have seen the excellent Ed Sheeran clip where he talks about how you learn nothing from success and you learn everything from failures.  It really got me thinking about my ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ during my career.  I don’t generally like to look at things as successes or failures, but there are definitely things that I’ve worked on that have been more effective (perhaps more successful) than others.

There have been projects I’ve tried to get off the ground that haven’t progressed as I’d like during my employed career, either because it wasn’t the right time, or the right solution, or there were too many other things happening at the same time, or a number of other reasons.  I’m ok with that.  It’s certainly made me more willing to try new things, even if they’re not guaranteed to work.  This has been especially helpful for me in starting a business and evolving it over time.

I’ve also had ‘failures’ since I started Sport Sister.  I’ve sent multiple proposals to potential clients that have then ghosted me.  It’s helped me develop a really strong idea of the ideal clients for us and that’s helped me make the best use of my time by prioritising those clients.

I’ve put lots of work into projects that haven’t landed, and that has also helped clarify my thinking on where Sport Sister is most needed and how we meet the needs of those organisations.

But from these failures, come great successes. The willingness to try new things has led to the Sport Sister Podcast and our Girls’ Football Programme, which has been a great success and a brilliant project to work on.  The clarity of who our ideal clients are has led to me opening conversations with some of these organisations and bringing them on board to work with us.

The thing is very few people remember your failures.  I struggled to remember some of mine when writing this post!  They will always remember your successes more, and so will you.  Once you have that knowledge, it frees you to try new things. Some will work and some won’t.  It’s the experience of the failures that makes the successes feel so much sweeter.  So if there’s something you’ve been thinking of doing but are too scared of failing then give it a go.  You have nothing to lose.  

And if we can help in any way, you know where to find us.