Making Mistakes is in Fact a Good Thing

I hear too often about people getting their heads chopped off for making mistakes. I, too, have gotten the worst treatment possible when I have made mistakes. This is sad because we have all heard too often, and we all know too well that mistakes are in fact opportunities. Mistakes are opportunities for you to identify where a process or idea fails. It allows you to modify things such that they don't fail again. They test people and can tell you the individuals who are strong enough to get up and try again.

"The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses."
- Napoleon Hill

"The journey is the reward."
- Chinese Proverb

"Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds."
- Orison Swett Marden

"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know."
- William Saroyan

I think I made my point about the benefits of failing at something. I believe it is also clear that you need to embrace your own failures, expect them to happen, and don't let yourself down when they do. Instead, get up and try to learn from your mistakes enough where you can do it again and again till you do succeed.

Now, sometimes it's hard to do it the wrong way, especially if you know how to do it the right way. The easiest way I find that I remember the good way is to always ask, "What are you going to do differently?"

Opposite side of the spectrum, if someone is continually and shows no progress in trying to learn, and they won't or can't hear what you tell them to think about differently, then they have failed the bad way, and sometimes it isn't worth pursuing. As long as you make an honest effort to help, then there is only so much you can do.

What do you think? What are other ways in which you can encourage other people to pick themselves up and keep going?