Failure is not the end...Only the beginning

     For whatever reason I've been thinking about failure a lot lately. There are few things that I fear more in life than failure. It's the reason that I have driven myself so relentlessly in my academic career. I fear failure in school, failure in my relationships, failure in work and most of all failure in life. It's the big F word that scares the crap out of me.

     My paradigm on failure, as you can see, saw it as the end all be all. I stumbled across a couple of quotes the other day that drastically changed my view on that big F word that gave me anxiety. The first is supposedly from Marilyn Monroe (I say supposedly because how reliable is the internet really?)

"Just because you fail once, it doesn't mean you're going to fail at everything. Keep trying, hold on, and always, always, always believe in yourself; because if you don't then who will? So keep your head high, keep your chin up and most importantly keep smiling, because life's a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about."

     I love that quote because essentially it says keep on keeping on and just keep swimming. If you live in this world you're going to encounter failure, it's just a truth that we all have to get comfortable with even if we really don't want to. But just because we fail once does not mean that we are failures. 

     The second is a quote from a female CEO named Sara Blakely, that unfortunately I had never heard of but I do love this quote.

"My dad encouraged us to fail growing up. He would ask us what we failed at that week, if we didn't have something he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome. Failure is not trying. Don't be afraid to fail." 

    I would do well to remember that failure isn't the outcome, it's just a nasty side effect to the outcome. The only time that anyone ever truly fails is when they stop growing, stop trying and stop bettering themselves because they are afraid of failure. So here I go with my new view on failure....

Much love,

-L