Notes

Failing Forward Turns Setbacks Into Stepping Stones

  • Updated July 3, 2025
  • 3 minute read
Failing forward turns setbacks into stepping stones

“Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune or temporary defeat.” — Napoleon Hill

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” — Michael Jordan

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” — Samuel Beckett

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” — Henry Ford

“Failure is to be expected, not avoided. Failure is feedback, not judgment.” — Alex Hormozi

“In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk.” — [@kiyosakiRichDadPoor2002]


Failing Forward: If you want to win, you have to lose first. All success begins with failure.

  • “One fails forward toward success.” — Charles Kettering
  • “Failure is the highway to success.” — Og Mandino
  • “Failure is success if we learn from it.” — Malcolm Forbes
  • “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” — Truman Capote
  • “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” — Dale Carnegie
  • “You must expect failure as part of your journey of success, failure and success go hand in hand, you cannot have one without the other.” — Richard Parkes Cordock
  • “When you double your rate of failure you double your rate of success.” — James Swanwick
  • “Legends aren’t defined by their success, they’re defined by how they bounce back from their failures.” — Chris Bosh
  • Failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success. Failure is success in progress.
  • Success comes from turning setbacks into comebacks.

失敗,是未來的墊腳石,但成功,也可能是未來的絆腳石。

  • Failure leads to learning, learning leads to success, success leads to complacency, complacency leads to failure.
  • → Never let success get to your head. Never let failure get to your heart.

The Donkey Mindset

One day, an old donkey falls into a deep well. ​ The farmer tries to figure out what to do, but decides, given the age of the animal and the danger of the deep open well, that the best course of action is to fill the well and close it off. ​ He begins to shovel dirt into the well. After several hours of work, the farmer is nearly done filling the well, when suddenly, to his amazement, the old donkey leaps out from the dirt-filled well and trots off into the pasture. The farmer realizes: Rather than resigning itself to its fate with each shovel of dirt that hit its back, the donkey had shaken the dirt off and stepped up on top of it. ​ As the farmer had continued to shovel dirt into the well, the clever donkey used the dirt to get closer to its escape.

Life will inevitably throw dirt your way—challenges, setbacks, and all kinds of troubles and struggles. The key to rising above it is to shake off that dirt and use it as a stepping stone. Every obstacle we face can be transformed into an opportunity to climb higher. Even when you find yourself in the deepest well, remember this: Shake it off, and take a step up. Never give up. With determination and resilience, you can turn every challenge into a path forward.


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Updated July 3, 2025 • 9 days ago
© 2025 • Hua-Ming Huang licensed under CC BY 4.0

Hua-Ming Huang

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