Failure

I love when people get their panties in a twist when it comes to failing. There are those in life that get by without actually doing anything because they are terrified to fail. I get it, the stigma society puts on this word is worse than being feathered and tarred in the streets, to some not all, and we sit back and let people think failing is not an option. You know what I have to say about that?

I challenge everyone who reads this blog to do something to day they've been avoiding because of failure. I know, you hear it all the time, failing is how you succeed, but until you're there and see it you will never believe it. Tell me, what's the worst that's going to happen by writing a new book or opening that small business you’ve been dreaming about since you were six? You may drop the ball on something in that business, sure, or you may write one-hundred pages of a novel that can’t quite be called a novel. You’ve learned a new lesson though, you’ve learned that relying too much on a certain employee could bring you to ruin, or that the gibberish you’ve put down on the page is just that, gibberish. Let’s change your perception, change your idea of the word “fail”. Because failing does not make you a failure, it makes you a learner.

For a long while, I took a period of time away from writing. I refused to pick up a pen because I felt like I was a failure. I wasn’t going to get anywhere with my words and no one was going to listen to me. Who cares? I played the ‘woe is me’ story for so long that I almost forgot the importance of writing in my life! So I got a rejection letter, okay so I got three rejection letters a year for about five years, but I was also fifteen and inexperienced. I was often given advice in those rejection letters, ways to better my writing and myself, advice I never took.

Now if I had buckled down, chosen to look over the words on the page instead of ‘sorry we cannot accept you at this time’, things might have gone differently for me. Instead of giving up and giving in, take the advice given to you and try again. You’re going into hard work, people aren’t always going to listen, but if you don’t have faith in yourself no one else will. So look into failing, be that person that drops the ball, because I guarantee you’ll learn something from it. That little, insignificant fail is going to teach you more about yourself than no amount of success can.

So! For today, let’s all go do something terrifying and new! Something we have all been dreaming about, or thinking about, and have some fun with it. We’re all going to fail, so, since it’s inevitable, let’s make it great. 

In the great words of my hero, JK Rowling: It is impossible to live without failing, unless you do so cautiously that you might as well have not lived at all - In which case, you fail by default.