There's a lot of neuroscience and brain wiring in the way these things work, but to keep this simple - example, in terms of things like failure, a toddler will fall over 110 times while walking the full length of 10 football fields in one day. Yet the toddler will never turn right and say, - "Oh, I'm not very good at that! - I'm failing! - I'm not going to try again." The toddler just gets up and tries again. One of my mantras would be - There is no failure, only feedback. - Feedback leads to knowledge. - Knowledge leads to confidence. - Confidence leads to competence. All of our learning is through feedback (failure). In behavioural terms, it's just a simple contingency that most people don't understand.