【推荐2】People were told from an early age, “You learn from your mistakes.” But is this true?

The answer is “yes” — failure can be a teachable moment.     1     It doesn’t feel good. So we react to failure in emotional ways, like giving up on a task, telling ourselves we don’t care, or finding fault with the task. This is self-protective, according to Hallgeir Sjastad, a professor of psychology and leadership at the Norwegian School of Economics. He says, “    2     So when we fail, it causes a serious threat to our self-image.”

Fortunately, there is a research to suggest that there are some strategies to help us overcome the emotional barriers around failure.     3     Instead of asking “Why did I fail?”, we could ask “Why did Sam fail?”, for example. Multiple studies by the University of Michigan show that adopting a third-person perspective helps to soften our negative emotional reactions, allowing us to look at failure more objectively.

    4     It led to better levels of motivation and academic success in the test groups. The group of adults and children were asked to give advice based on their own failures. Professors found that the satisfaction of helping others “forces people to connect with their experience and what they have learned”.

The writer Samuel Beckett once said: “Fail again, fail better.” But it now seems that we should be saying: “Fail again, fail smarter”. Failure is an unavoidable part of life.     5    

【推荐3】Let’s look back all these years you’ve gone through, what have you done for your life? Are you spending your time wisely to make your life worthwhile? Neal Wu shared some ways we should do to make our short time of life meaningful, find out what you need to do next:

a. Make friends as opposed to networking

Your friends will go a lot further than the professional contacts you make, especially since only one of the two groups is invested in your personal happiness.

b. Become an expert by learning as much as you can and deeply seeking out the things you are curious about

Find the things you enjoy and practice the skills you want to develop. If you can achieve expertise then it will be easy to obtain an audience.

c. Volunteer to help out those less fortunate

In the process you will gain a ton of new perspective and will better understand other people’s real problems. In a society that always looks upward, these people are being forgotten easily.

d. Become as independent as possible

Even though you work in a big company, you should constantly make small steps to reduce your dependence on your job. Write a book, build an app, or start a small business on the side. Release your inner entrepreneur.

e. Don’t spend too much time worrying about your personal brand

Accomplish(完成) things, and the recognition will follow.

f. Stop treating life as a competition and do things for their own sake

Genuine(真正的) interest should be what drives you to improve yourself, rather than a desire to beat others. Find a community of people who are interested in the same things as you do, and drive each other to keep improving.