When a person is in low self esteem, making a mistake only amplifies an existing sense of blame and disapproval. To them, a mistake is only proof that they are "less than". They may even be in denial of what really happened and may feel they have something to hide, even from themselves. These people can be very self defensive or destructive to themselves or even destructive and harmful to others. To compound that loss, they also don’t avail themselves of a fantastic and timely leaning opportunity; they get no useful and positive feedback and not much chance of making a change for the better. In fact, they are probably condemned to repeat the same past mistakes, right?
Why? It’s human nature for someone still struggling with emotional mastery and self esteem issues to ruminate on or even gloss over a failure. Besides getting stuck in feeling badly, they are missing so much good feedback because they don’t assess what went wrong with the intentions of learning so that they can do better next time!
Learning from your failures can and should be as informational and productive as learning from your successes. But only with this caveat: You need to examine your failures from the very same success mindset of thinking and behavior that gave you your successes!
