Failing can ruin some people. They never really recover. For others, failure can be a good thing—something that provides a benefit down the road.

How do you make sure you are one of those folks who let failure propel them forward to success? One of the strongest indicators of how you are impacted by failure long-term is seen in how you respond immediately after you fail. Research shows that the tell-tale response is whether you ‘own the failure’ or not. If you can find it in yourself to say something like “I’m sorry; I made a mistake. It was my fault,” then you are likely to learn from your failure.

If, instead, you pass the buck, blame other or make excuses, your one failure creates more failure. Then you are less likely to recover well from your error.

I read an article by Allison Fallon a while ago. She listed the ways that failure can be good for us:

Failure teaches us that success — real success — rarely comes in the form of a “big break”. More often than not, it comes after months, even years, of hard work.
Failure teaches us to try many avenues before giving up on reaching a goal because, usually, there is more than one way to get there.
Failure teaches us not to trust everyone who says they are out to help us. It teaches us, instead, to trust that gut feeling, the intuitive sense inside us.

And Lewis Schiff, Forbes contributor and Executive Director of INC., Magazine’s Business Owners Council, listed the five ways failure can be a stepping stone to success. He said you must 1) really forgive yourself, 2) talk it over with someone who is not afraid to talk about failure, 3) be honest about what really went wrong, 4) take responsibility and 5) TRY, TRY AGAIN!

He described ‘failure faith’ as a “… powerful conviction that every setback offers vital lessons that could not be learned any other way.” This seems motivating to me and I think I can identify times, in my own life, where this was the case.

We all fail sometimes. And it doesn’t feel great. But when it happens, it can be an opportunity to turn those mistakes and missteps into something that moves us toward a better outcome in the future. And that would be the best way to ‘succeed at failure’!