often learn much more when they fail—when they don't get what they want. As Pausch goes on to say, such experience of failure is often the most valuable trait a person has to offer. He notes that new companies often hire as CEO a person who tried to start a company and failed at it. That kind of an individual has more humility and, from having failed, a much stronger sense of what to avoid in order to succeed. A person with an unvarnished string of successes, on the other hand, Pausch states, can be blind to what is going wrong until it is too late.

These experiences of failure can personally be very valuable as well. If we learn the right lessons from them, they help us to be more attuned and empathetic toward other people and more aware of our own weak points. When we have the opportunity to fail, we also are still in a place where we can learn valuable lessons. It is only when people stop giving us opportunities to fail and stop offering us feedback on our failures that we are in trouble, because this means people have given up on us.