You’ve heard it a bajillion times in your life already: “Learn from your mistakes.” or “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Essentially the idea is that you need to learn from your failures and although it is truly my secret sauce I’ve now begun seeing the “other” side of things as well: Learning from your success.
In fact, it appears that there’s just as much to learn from success as failure (if not more). And this makes sense, right? Where do most of us learn how to better ourselves or how to improve in our jobs? We look to the people who have done it right, who have done it well, and who have succeeded.
I’ve spent countless hours pouring over product development research from some of the biggest and most successful software development businesses in the world. Why? Because I want to learn how they do what they do and I spend more time learning about their successes than their failures (although I read both equally with interest).
Now, in ministry, I’m learning how to navigate “success” and making the very best of it to further my career and make the next “stuff” even better. And honestly I’m not sure what to look for or what the “right” perspective is, especially since I’ve only been in ministry for less than a year.
So, how have you learned from your successes in ministry? What did you learn and how did you go about capturing that information and viewing in appropriately?
[Image from Kris]
Duncan Robinson says
James 1:19 has been really helpful for me, learning to be quick to listen and slow to speak and become angry. Learning to get all the facts in place before you develop something is really important. Also learning how to best manage volunteers is critical, sometimes it can feel like herding cats but they are the backbone to your ministry.
Daniel Roberts says
This reminds me of Marcus Buckingham's stuff. Which I agree with completely. (loosely quoted) "You can't learn how to have a good marriage by studying bad ones. The best you can hope to learn by that is how to have a 'not bad' marriage. To learn how to have a good marriage you have to study good marriages."
Michael Holmes says
I was just thinking that…I just finished one of Buckingham's books and it really challenged my thinking. So I really liked this post because it was right up that alley.
Great stuff John!
human3rror says
thanks man!
klreed189 says
I find it very interesting that even inside of learning from success there is still lessons from failure. I am purely talking about church area here (that is what I am familiar with and have been apart of the evaluation process) but I think it can go to other areas. I know when we would do youth events we would look at why they were successful, but there was always something that we could improve on. Maybe we should have changed the time, or had more of this… you get the idea.
IT seems that we are always working to improve no matter if it was a success or a failure.
Brian Alexander says
As I posted on twitter last night, "It's our failures more than our successes that make us who we are." – Defying Gravity. So true, So true.
human3rror says
🙂