Emily McDonald argues that tying your identity to never failing makes you fragile. Instead, treat setbacks as experiments and data points. This mindset builds resilience and lets you actually grow.
Stop making your failures mean something about you. There are really 2 sort of identities that you can hold. There is an identity of, I'm a successful person, therefore I cannot fail. And there's the identity of, I'm a successful person because I'm willing to fail, because failure can't hold me back. Which identity do you think is more stable, more secure? When you mess up, when you fail, when you get rejected, when you don't get the thing that you want, you can make it about you. You could make it about your abilities. You can make it about, oh, I guess I'm never going to succeed. Or you can just make it a learning lesson, make it an experience that you had, an experiment that you run, collect the data and move on. And that is the mindset that will allow you to grow and move beyond your failures.
