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I've found that the people who are most successful are those that ascribe their success to good luck. And when things fail, they examine what they did wrong: e

by sanj 18y ago

I've found that the people who are most successful are those that ascribe their success to good luck. And when things fail, they examine what they did wrong: externalize success, internalize failure. Those that believe that luck has "nothing to do with it" are generally endowed with a huge ego and no way to see around it. Strangely, they're also the ones most likely to blame bad luck when things go wrong: internalize success, externalize failure. The advantage to internalizing failure is that you can learn from it.

kirse 18y ago
From an optimistic (and even mental health) perspective, externalizing failure and internalizing success - aka "I did the best I could but the situation did not materialize" - is much healthier than internalizing failure and blaming yourself when things go wrong. Externalizing success never gives yourself due credit when things go right, and internalizing failure always blames yourself when things go poorly. See the problem? This is not to say one should have an inflated sense of value or "don't learn from your mistakes", but it is much healthier to optimistically look at failure as not a personal thing, but something external. People who have succeeded and are confident in themselves are never afraid to look back and admit that a little bit of luck (and opportunity) was part of the equation. But by no means will they discredit their own personal influence and attribute the entire success to something external.
- nostrademons 18y ago
  I recall a psych study on this. They found that people who externalize failure and internalize success are happier, but those who internalize failure and externalize success are more successful. And yeah, they did find the corollary that more successful people tend to be less happy. Makes perfect sense really.
  - sanj 18y ago
    I'm pretty happy. And pretty successful. Maybe I'm just lucky?
  - kirse 18y ago
    I could understand that study. When one roots their personal value in something external, like a measure of success, they spend their whole life working ridiculously hard and sacrificing everything to validate themselves based on the measuring stick of that externality. The only problem is the measuring stick always keeps growing taller. So what is "success" to that specific individual when they can't enjoy it or even recognize it as "good enough"? Others will tell them they're an amazing success, but they'll never believe it was enough of a success. That definition of being more successful is based on the others' perception. Not only that, but you'll notice the study did not say internalizing success means you'll be less successful. It's possible to be content by valuing yourself in foundational principles like "hard work, integrity" etc. and through that achieve both success and happiness. I'd be interested to see that psych study, but it does seem pretty common sense, though. The more you value an outcome in life the more you'll spend your life chasing it - and the higher probability you'll reach it.
brentb 18y ago
I'd argue that you can learn more from internalizing success, simply because I suspect the domain of things you can do wrong when starting a company is much larger than the domain of things you can do right. If you fail and learn not to do some of the things that led to the failure, there are likely still many more things you have yet to learn that may lead you to fail in the future (assuming you don't repeat your mistakes). On the other hand, if you succeed and learn from it, then you can apply some of the things that contributed to your success to future endeavors. I'd argue that this may be one reason you see so many serial entrepreneurs... reflecting on what contributed most to their successes allows them to achieve similar successes over and over. I'm not suggesting learning from your failures isn't valuable... it absolutely is. I'm simply suggesting that learning from your successes may be more valuable.

by sanj 18y ago

kirse 18y ago

From an optimistic (and even mental health) perspective, externalizing failure and internalizing success - aka "I did the best I could but the situation did not materialize" - is much healthier than internalizing failure and blaming yourself when things go wrong. Externalizing success never gives yourself due credit when things go right, and internalizing failure always blames yourself when things go poorly. See the problem? This is not to say one should have an inflated sense of value or "don't learn from your mistakes", but it is much healthier to optimistically look at failure as not a personal thing, but something external. People who have succeeded and are confident in themselves are never afraid to look back and admit that a little bit of luck (and opportunity) was part of the equation. But by no means will they discredit their own personal influence and attribute the entire success to something external.

nostrademons 18y ago
I recall a psych study on this. They found that people who externalize failure and internalize success are happier, but those who internalize failure and externalize success are more successful. And yeah, they did find the corollary that more successful people tend to be less happy. Makes perfect sense really.
- sanj 18y ago
  I'm pretty happy. And pretty successful. Maybe I'm just lucky?
- kirse 18y ago
  I could understand that study. When one roots their personal value in something external, like a measure of success, they spend their whole life working ridiculously hard and sacrificing everything to validate themselves based on the measuring stick of that externality. The only problem is the measuring stick always keeps growing taller. So what is "success" to that specific individual when they can't enjoy it or even recognize it as "good enough"? Others will tell them they're an amazing success, but they'll never believe it was enough of a success. That definition of being more successful is based on the others' perception. Not only that, but you'll notice the study did not say internalizing success means you'll be less successful. It's possible to be content by valuing yourself in foundational principles like "hard work, integrity" etc. and through that achieve both success and happiness. I'd be interested to see that psych study, but it does seem pretty common sense, though. The more you value an outcome in life the more you'll spend your life chasing it - and the higher probability you'll reach it.

brentb 18y ago

I'd argue that you can learn more from internalizing success, simply because I suspect the domain of things you can do wrong when starting a company is much larger than the domain of things you can do right. If you fail and learn not to do some of the things that led to the failure, there are likely still many more things you have yet to learn that may lead you to fail in the future (assuming you don't repeat your mistakes). On the other hand, if you succeed and learn from it, then you can apply some of the things that contributed to your success to future endeavors. I'd argue that this may be one reason you see so many serial entrepreneurs... reflecting on what contributed most to their successes allows them to achieve similar successes over and over. I'm not suggesting learning from your failures isn't valuable... it absolutely is. I'm simply suggesting that learning from your successes may be more valuable.