Attention Jordan Spieth: 5 Lessons You Can Learn From an Epic Meltdown Here's how you can use failure as an advantage.

By Dan Bova

Kevin C. Cox | Getty Images
Jordan Spieth during the final round of the 2016 Masters Tournament.

Everything was looking good for 22-year-old golf god Jordan Spieth to become a back-to-back Masters champion ... until it wasn't. After launching two shots into Rae's Creek, the usually rock-steady Spieth fell apart. By the end of the day, he passed along the green jacket to new Masters champion Danny Willett.

Losing is never fun. Failure, well, failure sucks. But as we've written in the past, if you make failure your friend, it can become your greatest weapon for the big win. Here are five lessons every entrepreneur should learn:

1. Failure is not an option. It's required.

When people think of success, they are usually talking about hefty profits and minimized costs. Certainly financial growth is a desired outcome. But one definition of success is much more modest. It literally means a result or outcome. Thus, if success is not necessarily a positive, then it stands to reason that failure is not necessarily a negative. What's key is to address failures, learn from them and move on to what comes next without completely demoralizing your team. Read more here.

2. There are seven major fears all successful people must overcome.

"What if it doesn't work? What if no one likes it? What if it fails?" These are the wrong questions you should be asking yourself. Instead of thinking about all the ways you may fail, concentrate on all the ways you may succeed! Even if you fail or make a mistake, it gives you a chance to reflect and correct. You must fail before you succeed. Every master was once a disaster. Read more here.

3. Understand what went wrong.

You already know that failure is a crucial and almost always necessary part of the path to success. However, there's more to failure than just learning from your mistakes -- there's owning up to them, too. Sometimes failure will come because of your own mistakes, sometimes it won't, but regardless of the reason something didn't work out, it's important that you own the problem. Read more here.

4. Inspiration can come in your darkest hour.

A wise man by the name of Einstein once said, "A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." Entrepreneurs dedicate their lives to inventing, reinventing and pushing the boundaries, so it's safe to assume mistakes are part of your journey. Read more here.

5. Owning mistakes is part of success.

Listen to Lewis Howes on how to learn to love your failures. Listen here.

Dan Bova

Entrepreneur Staff

VP of Special Projects

Dan Bova is the VP of Special Projects at Entrepreneur.com. He previously worked at Jimmy Kimmel Live, Maxim, and Spy magazine. His latest books for kids include This Day in History, Car and Driver's Trivia ZoneRoad & Track Crew's Big & Fast Cars, The Big Little Book of Awesome Stuff, and Wendell the Werewolf

Read his humor column This Should Be Fun if you want to feel better about yourself.

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