Quotes About Failure

Jack Coffey shrugged, and this was akin to waving a white flag of surrender. Sometimes losing was a good idea. Failure could be so restful. His tension headache was gone even before his two detectives had been dispatched uptown to Central Park.

If you're somebody when you're successful, what are you when you're unsuccessful?

NASA thought so. When they were soliciting applications for astronauts, they rejected people with pure histories of success and instead selected people who had had significant failures and bounced back from them.

Another way people with the fixed mindset try to repair their self-esteem after a failure is by assigning blame or making excuses.

In one world, failure is about having a setback. Getting a bad grade. Losing a tournament. Getting fired. Getting rejected. It means you're not smart or talented. In the other world, failure is about not growing. Not reaching for the things you value. It means you're not fulfilling your potential.

when you teach children to measure themselves from their success, they then measure themselves from their failure as well. Finally,

The idea of trying and still failing—of leaving yourself without excuses—is the worst fear within the fixed mindset, and it haunted and paralyzed her. She had even stopped bringing her violin to her lesson!

As a New York Times article points out, failure has been transformed from an action (I failed) to an identity (I am a failure). This is especially true in the fixed mindset.

Every situation is evaluated: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser?

However, lurking behind that self-esteem of the fixed mindset is a simple question: If you're somebody when you're successful, what are you when you're unsuccessful?

Cuando crees que tus cualidades básicas pueden desarrollarse, puede que los fracasos también te duelan, pero no te identificarás con ellos. Los fracasos no te definirán. Y si las habilidades pueden desarrollarse –si son posibles el cambio y el crecimiento–, eso significa que todavía existen muchos caminos hacia el éxito.

Even in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn't define you. It's a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.

the somebody–nobody syndrome. If I win, I'll be somebody; if I lose I'll be nobody.

Michael Jordan embraced his failures. In fact, in one of his favorite ads for Nike, he says: "I've missed more than nine thousand shots. I've lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot, and missed." You can be sure that each time, he went back and practiced the shot a hundred times.

How can one belief lead to all this—the love of challenge, belief in effort, resilience in the face of setbacks, and greater (more creative!) success? In the chapters that follow, you'll see exactly how this happens: how the mindsets change what people strive for and what they see as success. How they change the definition, significance, and impact of failure. And how they change the deepest meaning of effort.

failure has been transformed from an action (I failed) to an identity (I am a failure). This is especially true in the fixed mindset.

failure has been transformed from an action (I failed) to an identity (I am a failure).

Iacocca, Dunlap, Lay and Skilling, Case and Levin. They show what can happen when people with the fixed mindset are put in charge of companies. In each case, a brilliant man put his company in jeopardy because measuring himself and his legacy outweighed everything else.

understand the kind of mindset that could turn a failure into a gift.

This point is also crucial. In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you're not the best—it's all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they're doing regardless of the outcome. They're tackling problems, charting new courses, working on important issues. Maybe they haven't found the cure for cancer, but the search was deeply meaningful.

As a child I was a member of The Gifted Child Society and continually praised for my intelligence. Now, after a lifetime of not living up to my potential (I'm 49), I'm learning to apply myself to a task. And also to see failure not as a sign of stupidity but as lack of experience and skill. Your chapter helped see myself in a new light.

John Wooden, el legendario entrenador de baloncesto, dice que no eres un fracasado hasta que no empiezas a culpar

Como indica un artículo de The New York Times,32el fracaso ha pasado de ser una acción (yo fracaso) a ser una identidad (yo soy un fracasado). Esto es especialmente cierto en la mentalidad fija.

fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you're not the best—it's all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they're doing regardless of the outcome.