“Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”
— Ms. Valerie Frizzle, “The Magic School Bus”

Of course, you should try to avoid mistakes, but when you inevitably fail, be ready to learn. Get yourself in that mindset before you even begin. Set yourself up to continuously evaluate, and then adjust as you go. Checking your ego is critical. Self-awareness is absolutely necessary. But, if you fall flat on your face, that’s probably nature helping you with both.

You can learn from other people’s failures, too. They already did the hard part. You simply need to understand what happened. Otherwise, as George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Find examples of people in similar situations to yours and figure out what they did right, what they did wrong, and what they already learned from the experience.

So, always try to win, but give yourself permission to lose. Don’t worry about what other people think of your loss. Focus on maximizing the experience. And after you fail, always get back up and start moving forward better, stronger, and wiser.