Oh, my gosh, I did it again!
Wendy has been working on presenting her second case in court: the first one was a disaster. She’s practiced and paced the floor of her apartment for hours going over and over her points. And, each time she faces the judge, she chokes. She forgets her points and becomes so anxious that she starts trembling.
Why can’t Wendy get past this roadblock?
Maybe her roadblock is tied to an old childhood fear about authority – which is certainly an issue she can examine in therapy.
But, what if it’s simply the fact that she’s trying the same unsuccessful approach over and over instead of exploring a new approach?
For Wendy to build insight in her new profession, she has to learn to examine her failures. This is where a video of her first case could help her.
The thing is, our brains learn from failure.
The way you get it right next time is to study what you got wrong this time.
So, if Wendy could watch a video of her first case, she’d see herself as she faces the judge. She’d notice that she holds her glance longer than most people, as if to wait for approval. When approval doesn’t come, she reacts by chocking.
Her emotional experience of getting it wrong (by looking too long at the judge), can help her know how to get it right (by shortening her glance, only making eye contact then looking toward the jury).
The thing is, failure builds intuition.
You tend to learn more from unpleasant emotion than from pleasant emotion because it’s unpleasant emotion that helps your brain revise its models and schemas.