In my line of work, I have to make presentations on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. Sometimes my presentations are not well received and sometimes they are. No matter the reception, I do the same thing at the conclusion each time. I head to my car and I immediately take stock of what just occurred, what did I do right, what did I do wrong? What could I have done differently? Self assessment is important during times of failure but what most people don't realize is that it's equally important during times of success -perhaps more important.Do you move on and forget about it, do you learn and change from it, etc.
This depends on the situation. Sometimes things/people fail for a reason. If you take a serious look at the reason for the failure you can either modify your approach or come to the conclusion that it failed because it is irrevocably flawed.
I could not agree more. Too often I find myself and other characterizing failure and getting too emotional about it, and I get too excited by success. The most important way to receive failure is as feedback, because anything else will either scare you off or make you repeat the mistakes that made it a failure. It's much harder to figure out why something went well than why something went wrong, I've been finding.