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YOUR FIRST ASSIGNMENT

Your first assignment: “My Failure Résumé”

Look honestly at the life you have lived. Begin again with a deeper understanding.

Your learning at Lifelong Success University begins with “My Failure Résumé”. Give yourself the time and quiet you need to reflect on the years that have brought you here.

Some experiences are hard to speak about: an opportunity we let pass, a relationship we damaged, an ambition we abandoned, or a decision that still makes us wince years later. Life moves on, but regret can remain.

Give those experiences a place on the page. Return to the circumstances as they were: What did I want? Why did I choose that path? What did I overlook? Did the same mistake happen again? Look honestly at your responsibility, alongside the conditions you could not control.

What happened belongs to your past. You can acknowledge that you were wrong or fell short, and still make a serious commitment to learn, change and stop repeating the same choices.

This deserves as much time as you need. Read what you have written, sit with it, and return another day. An experience you once struggled to admit may reveal precisely what you now need to learn.

Let “My Failure Résumé” mark a new beginning. Bring the courage to face yourself honestly, study the skills behind success, and practise making different choices. Build, step by step, a life you want to live.

Why write “My Failure Résumé”?

At Stanford, Tina Seelig asked students to review failures in their personal, professional and academic lives and record what each taught them. Inspired by that practice, we developed the reflection and action questions below.

Stanford · Update Your Failure Resume (2010)

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Work through the stages of your life. List unsuccessful efforts, missed opportunities, responsibilities you fell short of, and memories that still feel embarrassing. Number them and add to them over time.

For the experiences you listed, recall your goals, choices and actions. Include hesitation, delay, things you gave up on, or advice you dismissed.

Describe the outcomes, the costs and the people affected. Stay with the facts before defending your choices or judging yourself.

Look for patterns across your experiences: mistaken assumptions, poor preparation, fear of rejection, unclear communication, or something else. Distinguish your responsibility from external conditions and what remains unknown.

Name beliefs or habits you need to change, efforts worth keeping, and harm you may be able to repair. Allow yourself to release what you cannot change.

Describe the person you want to become, what you most need to learn, and the first action you will take. Return later to ask whether your choices and actions are truly changing.

Before you finish