How to Improve Learning for Growth

My High School Experience on Embracing Failure and Learning from Feedback

Do you still remember where your first-year high school class was located?

My school is located on a major highway, but my class was situated far from the road due to the school’s extensive land area.

Recently, I realized that as I progressed through the years, the main road became more visible, and the distance to our class became shorter.

It may take longer for students who repeat a class to see the road clearly.

Here are the lessons:

When starting any project or business, it may seem like you are in the wilderness. As you continue, you become more aware of the terrain, and strategies for becoming successful become handy. You learn when and what decisions to make to move forward, having learned from past failures.

Starting a new project can feel like being lost in the wilderness. But as you progress, you learn the terrain and strategies for success.

dhepro

If you are unconcerned about your failures, getting to the main road will take longer, and you will remain in the dark. Soon, frustration sets in, and you may start giving up, and finally, drop out.

If you are fortunate enough to move on, you are 100% likely to start your new undertaking with the same disposition, and you will get similar results on the new terrain.

What should you do in a “failure” situation?

Failure in school is inevitable because students don’t have similar IQs and have different responses to factors affecting their performance. However, each failure has a unique set of approaches to resolving it. It may be that those failing have not identified their unique strategies to succeed.

But our perceived failures are feedback to improve the quality of our final results. They are means of preparing us for the future.

Recall that children learn to write by scratching—holding the pencil and writing anything. It doesn’t make any sense to their parents or their teacher. But they are happy doing that. Weeks later, Junior begins to join lines to form letters, then add letters to form words… I guess you understand the process.

When they eventually get their dream job, parents are not likely to remember the tiny steps that led them to the top. It took them not less than 15 or 16 years to get there, starting with seemingly insignificant things.

Friends, don’t give up on yourself. Each stage you pass through has a value being added to the end result. Failures are feedback. When they slow you down, get acquainted with the success road terrains, landmarks, potholes, bumps, among other features that will improve your road experience when passing similar routes in the future.

Kindly use the comment section to share how you have been improving your performance in current endeavour.

Beginning again

One day you might sit together at the same table, sharing unrelated steps leading to the same achievement of your dreams.

It appears I am now routing for laziness. I am no longer regular here.

Many things have happened, actually. I’m just trying to ensure I do a follow-up here.

Ok, let me start off by refreshing your memory with what I have done so far and state why I cannot give up writing here.

I started this blog in the year 2020. You remember what happened that year? I do too. That means I know what you know.

But that’s not what I meant. I am referring to what happened to you in person. Ok, you can share in the comment section.

I’m back. So, I decided to start this blog that year and promised not to look back. I made a request for my readers to join me on this journey. If you haven’t seen the post, you can read it. For a reminder, I titled it, “Step out, We’re together“.

Step out because someone somewhere is launching out just like you. He loves having a partner embarking on a similar journey. Your invisible friend didn’t want to give up; why will you? You needed some energy, which he is giving you now. How would you celebrate seeing each of your dreams come true? It is that simple; let’s launch out to celebrate together. One day you might sit together at the same table, sharing unrelated steps leading to the same achievement of your dreams.

I have dreams too. I wish I could reach the same zenith as that persons I admire. I can use what I have now, motivate myself, and promise not to give up. I will raise the bar by improving my delivery.

Later, I wrote that you must be PROACTIVE, RELEVANT, and ORGANIZED. That is an exact clue to the name of this blog (The Pro).

You are not supposed to remain at the same level of uncertainty after stepping out. Add to what you know by being proactive. Don’t maintain the same follower role. Perhaps that’s the level at which you are operating; if you don’t give up, someone will start following you—in a little way—and soon things will get better.

Relevance will make you dynamic, grow, and give quality output.

Being organized means doing things the way they should be done. Follow the standard. If there is no standard, develop one that others can follow.

Let me conclude my 2020 story with this quote from a post that featured on this site that year, Staying Relevant, That’s All:

“You can define your rules but be sure they have these ingredients: More mastery of the relevant, up to date, more actions, what others do, with others, and for the need of others.”

I understand that “to every action, there is an equal and opposite action”, and that’s the sum of my excuse in recent times.

Anyways, I promise to share new contents soon. I hope you will be available to check it out. Kindly subscribe to get notified you when. 🙏

Spare times for other things

There is a contingency, but you need to reserve some energy for subsequent task.

So, you woke up to pursue the goal of your team at the early hour of the day.

You have been dreaming of the experience and you’re busy checking your time to see its 7 ‘O’ clock – the setting out time.

You stood up as if it’s your life and soon, you got to the project site.


A valued member like you started the tasks on the project, expecting another team member to join you.

Soon you were notified of a call on your communication gadget.

It was your team member but you couldn’t pick it up. An attempt to return the call was not successful.

“Member B wanted to remind me of the task of today, you thought. He will join me.” You said.

Later the call came in again.

There is an emergency. That’s why I called the other time and I wanted you to attend to it.

No time for much details.

It is clear that something has to be done urgently but you took out some time to avoid taking rash decisions that will affect the system. However, you acted within the time frame the emergency will not degenerate.

It became very clear you need to outsource part of your work at some costs which you didn’t plan.

What a contingency there! It is a worthy decision but you need to reserve your energy for future project.


Thankfully, everything was successful.

You still have spare time to take your favorite drink.

Congratulations on your new managerial role.

That’s just a tip of what you should expect in your managerial role.

7 Tips on trying something new

Weigh the pros and cons of your new initiatives in the light of your target beneficiaries. Without them, implementing your plans will not be possible. They deserve the best.

– dhepro –

Trying out something new can be demanding especially, if the process and outcome requires public attention. Can you relate with this? I was contacted about the possibility of delivering a talk 24 hours to a programme. I have the opportunity of choosing a topic which I communicated to the lead of the team for approval. My suggestion was approved but I wanted to try something new. Unlike other talks I have had when I prepared presentation slides, I decided not to do so this time. 

Added to this, I do not want to make any written preparation. My concepts are in my head except for checking up some facts in relevant sources. I was serious about this. I planned to tell the audience that I want to be as disorganized as possible. The aim of this is to ensure full concentration of participants. I believe if I don’t tell them the title at the introduction, nor organize my points, they will be forced to follow closely. To crown it up, I intend asking one or two persons to write a report thereafter. The initiatives were products of my mental processes. I never read or heard from it from anybody.

Does it end well? I can’t really say, my audience should be in the best position to evaluate the delivery, but I didn’t tell them my intention. From personal evaluation, I didn’t do well. Hours and a week after, I have not recovered from the ‘you never do well’ feeling. Come and see me fighting with myself and even talking out loud when I am alone. I recorded the session but I am afraid of replaying to avoid self-crucifixion. It isn’t a bad idea though. I might still checkup when I am in the right frame of mind.

Let’s me highlight seven factors I didn’t consider before talking that step.

1. Duration consideration

I should have remember that I have just few minutes for delivery. It’s like I was at the heart of my talk when the moderator brought a note to notify that I have just 2 minutes to conclude. I should have highlighted some important point that will leave the participant with some indelible marks. Hence, the downside of not having written preparations.

2. Continuous improvement

Many things to implement. I included too many new details in my plan. I felt I should have one or two ideas in my outing and prepare others for the future. Focusing on continuous improvement is not a bad idea. It will prevent being overwhelmed with pressure to achieve everything.

3. One thing


My audience and I were new to the initiatives. I should have focused on them rather than including myself or focus on myself rather than including them. I was overwhelmed by many details. It doesn’t mean the two objectives cannot be implemented. Other factors like duration, experience in doing similar things, type of audience among others might be relevant in taking such decision.

4. Engaging senses

Having a paper work would have made a difference. I would have engaged most of my senses by penning down my ideas during the planning, then disengage them during implementation. That would have improved the situations. We need our senses at the conception stage to have better delivery using limited senses.

5. Observing milestones

These is very important.  I had a good starting point intention but the delivery plan was not properly managed. I had good ingredients for closing but delivery not organized having been served time warning card. This is awkward, I think.

6. Righting priorities

There are several options for achieving my ideas. It was good trying out new initiatives but it is also relevant to consider the above factors and other important details next time. 

7. Preferential advice

Weigh the pros and cons of your plans in the light of your target benficiaries. Without them, implementing your plans will not be possible. They deserve the best. If you’re fortunate to serve them another meal, you may be able to redeem your image after the first flaw. What if this is not possible? Will they recommend you? If you even have the opportunity for another delivery, will they be available body, soul and spirit to take in what you bring newly no matter how well you have improved. They deserve the best. ‘Customers are kings’. Put yourself in their shoes. See you again but before then, please evaluate this delivery.

I didn’t prepare well for this, I just noted down my experience and wanted to share with you. I believe that our ORDINARY daily experiences can be ‘big D’s’ while trying out something bigger to achieve the EXTRAORDINARY. You think so?

Personal Style Inventory

What you might not be doing right

What’s your uniqueness?

Do you have any? You will need to make some decisions because you want a change in who you are, what you are doing, or what your results have been. You may also be interested in improving yourself. Whatever your reason, every individual is uniquely woven as the distinction in our fingerprints. Your uniqueness has advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses, and they sometimes define the opportunities you have and threats to achieving your dream. Taking deliberate steps to assess yourself is an activity that must be incorporated into your plan to avoid wasting the resources of time, energy and other consumables. When this is not done, you may get little or nothing from the efforts put into daily life. Hence, the need for proper self-assessment.

What’s worth doing?

It is simple. Start today and now. Conduct an assessment. It is not a difficult task if you are thinking of the complexity. There are standards you can follow to achieve this, like the Briggs Personal Style Inventory, one of the most popular. Although it involves some calculations because figures are required, there are online self-helps to speedup up the process. Do a search. 

What’s it?

The personal assessment is an inventory of yourself in certain areas that make you think about your personality shape and become known to yourself and how to deal with others, challenge some of the things you do and reflect on your own personal and professional development. 

You need to know how you react to people and situations under certain conditions, how you form an opinion, your value for quality, and how to manage yourself in success and failure situations. Since experiences cannot be the same forever, the assessment will make you proactively address them. For example, if you find out it is always hard to make a quick decision, you may need to tell your team members to always inform you early to have enough time to process and arrive at a final decision. 

What’s the benefit?

Personal assessment should include your level of introversion, extroversion, intuition, thinking ability, perception, sensing, feeling and judging. Generally, there are pairs of questions on which you are expected to rate yourself on some qualities based on your preferences. In the end, you get some values for each of the qualities that explain your uniqueness. Depending on a scale, you can determine the dominance of quality in your personality. There are also clear explanations of the traits of people with those qualities. Alongside this, there are explanations of their positive and negative sides. Thus, those attributes you feel are odd or supposed negative dimensions of you may be relevant in some situations and not totally a disadvantage. However, you can improve yourself such that when you do not need them, they are suppressed to get your results.

What’s the essence?

I came across a sample manuscript on a personal statement, which I downloaded some time ago. As I read through, I found the author referring to Personal Style Inventory. Fortunately, before writing this post, I needed a self-assessment to recommit myself to some values, one of which is writing this post and other contents of this blog. I won’t look back on this. I see the need to move on positively in my profession. I will be adding more initiatives in the future to keep moving with the vision in my first post on this blog. You can join me by appending your commitment in the comment section. Also, remember to share.

By the way, are you aware I started a video channel a few years ago? Those times I am not dropping a post here, I might be up to something on my channel.