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Failure & regret

Failure & second chances

Seven questions about setbacks, bad advice, embarrassment, apologies, and whether you would edit the past.

7 questions, 1,009 answers on the record, from 691 members. Every question is asked in FLAPSS wording — nobody answers as anybody else.

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Worth reading

How has a setback or failure set you up for later success?

Frederick Sanger

Biochemist; twice a Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1958 and 1980

They’re not failures, you try something and it doesn’t work, and some people, you know, get fed up with this, and I’ve known some of my friends and colleagues who have just decided to give…

Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 2000

Cal Ripken Jr.

Baseball player; holder of the record for consecutive games played

No. I mean if you fail 70 percent of the time, you had a great year. You're dealing with failure seven out of ten times as a hitter.

Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 2020

Kurt Vonnegut

Novelist and essayist

I would try to write my war story, whether it was interesting or not, and try to make something out of it.

Recorded · The Paris Review · 1977

Read all 69 →

Every question in this questionnaire

  1. How has a setback or failure set you up for later success? 69
  2. What is the worst advice you followed anyway? 4
  3. What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 35
  4. What disappointment has stayed with you longest? 367
  5. When were you most embarrassed? 122
  6. Who deserves an apology from you, and for what? 209
  7. If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change? 203

Who has answered

Members with enough answers in this questionnaire to be worth arriving at — listed A–Z, not ranked by count.

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