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There's learning the easy way (from reading and the experience and wisdom of others), and there's learning the hard way (from our own failures). When you're an entrepreneur, there will probably be both.

You might think that being a lifelong learner is a strange skill for an entrepreneur. Really, it's just the opposite. The mindset of a lifelong learner is teachability. It says, "Whatever is going on, I know I can learn from it." Can you see how that attitude can change adversity into an advantage?

Learning Lessons from Setbacks

In You Can Do It Too: 20 Essential Things Every Budding Entrepreneur Should Know, Rachael Bridge discusses 20 entrepreneurs who failed in business and then went on to become multimillionaires. Each one offers some advice based on the mistakes they made.

Kim Fletcher, an adviser with Business Link in Kent, says: ‘You need to be able to detach yourself from it. If you regard failure as being something personal, you will not be able to take a step outside it and look at it dispassionately. You have to be able to say, did I make the right decision or the wrong decision? What information didn’t I have that would have helped me make a better decision that would not have taken me down this route?’

He says a vital element of being able to learn from your mistakes is analyzing the type of failure you experienced so you can find out the reason for it. Normally, on closer inspection, it will be obvious what caused it. ‘Is it a failure because you lost money, or because you lost a customer, or because you lost a person in your business? Perhaps you were far too engaged in the technology at the expense of delivering what the customer wanted?

Daniel Ronen, an advisor from DoS UK, says the big benefit of making a mistake is that it gives you time to reflect: ‘Failure forces you to stop, look, think and act. That is the cycle everyone should be doing in business. The problem is that people are so busy doing what they are doing that they do not stop and take a hard look at what is working, what is not working and what needs to change. But with failure you are actually forced to stop what you are doing and start thinking about it again.’

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And then there are insights that can change your life. Autoletic thinking turns problems into challenges to be met and learned from. It is an approach that will change your life if you practice it.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, a remarkable book in which he discusses how our thinking can enhance our quality of life. He explains how a rich, strong, powerful person is no more in control of his consciousness than someone who is sickly, poor, weak, or oppressed. The difference is in whether he sees challenges as threats or as opportunities for action.

What he calls the autotelic self refers to someone who has the ability to translate potential threats into enjoyable challenges, and thus has an internal balance. The term autotelic self means a person who has self-contained goals. For most people, goals are shaped by biological needs and social conventions - things which are outside the self. The difference is that the autotelic self, or the person who is capable of defining things for himself, is also capable of transforming threats into non-threatening challenges. This can be done with a simple change of perspective, a shift in consciousness: that is, seeing a threat as a challenge that you can overcome. Once you can do that, the steps are simple;

Be crystal clear about the goal. Once you know exactly what the goal is, you have an understanding of what is needed to meet it. Then you can decide on a series of actions necessary to accomplish the goal.

You can modify these actions as needed in order to meet the goal.

Become involved in the activity -- This means commitment. This means action. Whether things are going your way or not, you consistently take action with the next best steps. This demands concentration, commitment, and follow through.

Pay attention to what is happening - This really means that the project becomes more important than your own feelings about what is happening. Your concentration is on the results of the project. You invest your energy in the project. You are committed, you are involved -it’s about the project, not about you.

Enjoying the experience - the autotelic self is able to set goals, develop skills, be sensitive to feedback, get involved, and look past obstacles. The benefit of learning to be an autotelic personality is that anything that happens can be a source of joy because it is a source of learning and step to the next goal. In other words, there are no failures, only learning experiences.

This approach to thinking can mean the difference between living life in fear or living life in joy. Developing autotelic thinking will give you the ability to transform random events into learning experiences that eventually result in success. Life is change - by definition and for everyone. Seeing that as a challenge to be accepted, enjoyed, and built on is the “secret” to successful living.