At 26, Jack landed his first leadership role at GE. Fresh out of school with a Ph.D., he was brimming with confidence when he couldn’t believe his first major achievement as a lead engineer would be to blow up a factory. And although there was no loss of life caused through the accident, it left Jack with a bruised ego.

According to Jack, his boss had instructed him to report the incident to his superior. As he recalled, “It was the longest drive and the longest night.” “I learned a lot from that experience. I went down to see him and told him what had happened.”

Yet, to Jack’s surprise, all his boss did was to give him words of encouragement. “He was a Ph.D. chemical engineer, professorial sort of guy, and all he was inquisitive about was what went wrong, and did I understand it, and what could I do about it, and could I design the commercial plant now that I’d blown up the pilot plant.” he said.

Thus, this was to mark the turning point in his life. Through this incident, Jack had learned a valuable lesson: Never ever to go after anybody when they are down. There will come a day when you are going to land yourself in a difficult situation too.

What separates successful people from failures are that successful people are often willing to try, fail and learn from their mistakes. They recognize that this process of falling and learning is the fastest manner to achieve huge success in life.