Right Kind of Wrong

corporate research and development labs (novel context),

Each of us is a fallible human being, living and working with other fallible human beings. Even if we work to overcome our emotional aversion to failure, failing effectively isn’t automatic. We also need help to reduce the confusion created by the glib talk about failure that is especially rampant in conversations on entrepreneurship.

resilient people make more positive attributions about events than those who become anxious or depressed.

if you expect to try your best, accepting that you might not achieve everything you want, you’re likely to have a more balanced and healthy relationship with failure.

It starts with the willingness to look at yourself—not to engage in extensive self-criticism or to enumerate your personal flaws, but to become more aware of universal tendencies that stem from how we’re wired and are compounded by how we’re socialized.

Left to our own devices, we will speed through or avoid failure analysis altogether.

One of the most important strategies for avoiding complex failures is emphasizing a preference for speaking up openly and quickly in your family, team, or organization.

It’s human to feel anger and blame, but it’s not a strategy for helping us avoid and learn from failure.

Our aversion to our failures also leaves us vulnerable to feelings of relief when someone else fails.