Own your failure

The other day I came across a good piece of advice on failures and defeat. In all its simplicity, it goes like this:

You must take ownership of your failure.

This is to be understood in such a way that when you lose (and one can lose in many contexts), then there is no reason to see yourself as a victim, or to make excuses. You must, of course, try to understand why and come up with explanations so that it becomes possible to correct your actions next time - but basically you have to accept that you have lost and take the defeat on yourself. Only when we do this, we able to improve ourselves and thereby have a chance of avoiding to take ownership of more defeat, the next time we try to win.
(Translated from "Tag ejerskab over dit nederlag")