I learned the value of connection and correction when my daughter was 16.
I had been reading John Maxwell’s books for a long time. Over the years, I had come across one of his books entitled Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn. Eventually, I also found the teen version of that book and decided to buy it.
Just a few months after buying that book, my daughter got into some trouble. As a result, I decided to give her two choices: she could lose her phone for a month or read the book and write a summary of each chapter, what she learned from it, and how she applied it.
She decided to read the book.
Through this experience of walking and talking with my daughter as she went through this book, we both matured. The true meaning of “sometimes you win, sometimes you learn” began to sink in.
Today, I am sharing some of the top lessons from this book and how you can learn from your greatest losses in life.
A Four-Step Process to Learning From Your Losses
When you lose or make a mistake, you need to put in the time and effort to learn from that experience. Here is a sure-fire process for that kind of learning based on lessons from John Maxwell’s Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn.
1. Cultivate humility
Humility is the spirit of learning. It means learning to become the best version of ourselves and admitting we don’t have it all figured out.
2. Face reality
This is what I told my daughter when we went through the book. Facing reality is the foundation of learning.
We must figure out where we’re at and accept responsibility for it. When you’ve lost something, it hurts. However, if you can accept responsibility, you can figure out how to improve from there.
3. Hope
Hope is the motivation for learning. Figure out why you’re here and what you want your life to look like.
4. Be teachable
Can you embrace new ideas and things to overcome adversity? If not, you need to become teachable. This is the only way to truly learn.
If you want to learn more about how to learn from loss through connections and corrections, check out Episode 074: Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn – Connections and Corrections.
