NEW YORK — When Sara Blakely, founder of the shapewear brand Spanx, was a child, her father would pose an unusual question to her and her brother over dinner: How did you fail this week?

“He encouraged us to fail, and not to be afraid of it,” she said. “If we didn’t have something to tell him that week, he would be disappointed.”

But most of us try to avoid failure and are embarrassed when things go wrong, said Dr Amy Edmondson, a professor of leadership at Harvard Business School and author of “Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well.”

She outlined ways to process and learn from our mistakes.

PUT YOUR FAILURE INTO CONTEXT. When we fail, our brains tend to catastrophise, and “then end up with the physiological and emotional response of actual fear,” Dr Edmondson said.

But it’s possible to reframe your failures as necessary life experiences. Ask yourself: What did I set out to do? What actually happened? (This question isn’t about focusing on how you “screwed up,” she said. It’s about dispassionately examining the facts.)

Is it possible to make amends or course correct? Exploring these questions can keep you from panicking, or blowing your failure out of proportion, she said.

LEARN HOW TO PIVOT. Rather than wallowing in shame after a setback, focus on what you can do to move on or change direction. Recognise the ways you might manage to pivot, Dr Edmondson said.

If, say, a relationship failed, you might try a new dating app, have a divorce party or take a break from dating and regroup.

Measure your success on progress and learning. “A failure is an end, but a pivot looks forward rather than backward,” she said.

ENCOURAGE FAILURE SHARING. Humility and honesty are two essential ingredients of the “fail well” mind-set, Dr Edmondson said. And sharing our fiascos with others, she said, minimises shame, encourages truth telling and offers people a chance to learn from each other’s mistakes.

“It normalises the reality of failure for all of us and is deeply bonding,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.