After a great 7-1 start to their season the Chicago Bears suffered two losses in a row, the last one being a severe beat-down by the San Francisco 49ers on a nationally televised Monday night game. Adding to my woes that day as a diehard Bears fan, my best buddy Jim is a huge 49ers fan.

After that loss, to a player each could have blamed others saying such things like: Offensive line, you were horrendous (again) and couldn’t stop a grandmother from sacking our highly overpaid second-string quarterback. Hey defense, did you forget what a tackle was and for Pete's sake, Devin, would you please, please run forward next time on a punt return.

But they didn’t. Not to each other privately and certainly not publicly. They knew they let the team down. When a good team loses, each individual team member takes a good hard look in the mirror and says to himself, “I could have done better."

Steve Tobak wrote in his article “3 Words That'll Change Your Life": “The virtues of failure is a popular topic these days. While it's true that the only way to get anywhere in business is by failing – a lot – that only works if you learn from your mistakes and then move on. Some people wear failure and regret like an albatross around their neck, completely unaware of how masochistic that sort of behavior is. You only gain wisdom if you learn lessons from failure, forgive yourself – I mean really forgive yourself – and then get on with your business. And treat others' failure the same way.”