Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tell any young adult who will listen the mistakes I made. It's nice when they stop by with stories and whiskey the days before Christmas and see them come up strong, happy, and on a solid path towards success. It's only through the stories of our mistakes that we can escape the clutches of time.
I agree, partially, I'm adamant about the fact that it's even more important to talk about successes, than failures. "Vicarious learning from the experiences of others saves making errors yourself, but I regard the study of successes as being basically more important than the studyof failures. As I will several times say, there are so many ways of being wrong and so few of being right, studying successes is more effi…
I think the reason is that success is usually cumulative: each little win builds on the last until it's obvious you're going in the right direction. Those wins often depend on random or temporary things you have little control over. For example: CED was the perfect format for the decade RCA started developing it in, but it took until VHS redefined the market to finish it.[0]
Meanwhile one mistake can send everything tumbling down. Study enough mistakes and you might know enough of what to avoid to stay afloat long enough to find the right chain of wins.