Learning can be an awkward, even painful, process of repeated failure. Young children are great at this, but as we get older, we seem to become resistant to incompetence.

What do you notice watching? In addition to the tribute to moms who support — what does it say about failure and learning? Can you imagine yourself in that process of falling and falling and getting up one more time?

When I tried snowboarding a few years ago, I had no real objection to the first 30 times I hit the snow. Yet in other areas of my life, I’m disappointed when I don’t do well. I suspect a key difference is expectation. Snowboarding, I expected to fall (though I didn’t expect *quite* as much pain as I experienced when I fractured my tailbone). In other areas, I expect to succeed quickly, and then I’m disappointed by my failures.

In our book, Inside Change, Max Ghini & I wrote that a key step to change is, “find the success in the failure… A well-used failure may have even more value than a success.” How can we convert failure from a crushing weight into a building block?

2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeong Chang gives a beautiful example of this principle. At the start of the men’s 30km skiathlon, Simen Hegstad Krueger crashed into two other skiers — what a terrible failure. Listen to the optimism in his explanation (from NBC):

In the end, Krueger earned gold — but only after a spectacular failure.