Failure & regret

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?

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Larry Ellison American businessman
Oh, absolutely. I think most overachievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure. Unless failure gets very close and very nearby that fear doesn’t reach profound levels, but it drives us. It drives me to work very hard.
Recorded Academy of Achievement, Academy of Achievement interview, San Francisco, California, 1 May 1997 source ↗
Frederick W. Smith Founder and long-serving chairman of FedEx Corporation
I was a student at Yale and wrote a paper about the computerized society that was on the horizon. ... Then I sort of let that lie. I didn’t get a particularly good grade on it, as I recall.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 23 May 1998 source ↗

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