At the 2012 Visa U.S. National Gymnastics Championships, Gabby Douglas had her sights set on taking home the individual all-around gold.

But in the first skill in her routine, the three-time Olympic gold medalist found herself on the floor.

"I made a mistake, I fell on my back handspring layout," Douglas, who is currently promoting her partnership with Ancestry, tells CNBC Make It. "How do you go on from that? Do you give up? Do you have an attitude?"

Rather than resign herself to a subpar showing at the competition, Douglas says her slip-up only sharpened her competitive instincts.

"It motivated me even more to do floor well, to do vault, to do bars and to end up coming in second place," the 28-year-old says. "The mistake drove me to be like, 'We're not going to give up. We're just going to put that away and we're going to do what we came here to do.'"

For Douglas, who was part of Team USA gymnastics at London 2012 and Rio 2016 and is currently training to make the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, the times when she failed at what she was trying to do were as important to her success as when she'd nail a dismount.

"It's gonna sound weird, but success for me was failing," she tells Make It. "It was falling seven times. It was making mistakes. That way, I could go back in the gym and be like, 'Okay, what do we need to work on to make sure all areas are covered and shored up?'"

Because gymnastics is so physically and mentally demanding, Douglas says failing and getting back up and trying again helped her keep her edge.

"You need to make sure all your bases are covered on all of the events and all these skills," she says. "For me it was my failing which pushed me and really drove me to push the best out of myself and want the best out of myself."

Douglas' approach is an example of a growth mindset, which is the belief that there's always room to improve and learn even when you're the best at what you do.

Yale psychology professor Laurie Santos previously told CNBC Make It that learning to fail at public speaking was what helped her learn she had the resilience to bounce back. She's now a viral TED Talk speaker and hosts a popular podcast.

"One of the best ways of doing that — of getting better over time — is to actually experience failure, to experience the consequences of messing up," Santos said. "That allows us to learn more about how to do better in the future."

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