Failure

We are not perfect. We are human. All day, every day, we make mistakes. We cannot walk on water. We cannot create miracles or right all wrongs. We are simple beings, placed on this earth to navigate struggles, trials, and obstacles—learning to rely on each other and spreading kindness along the way.

Sometimes, life gives us more than we can handle. Sometimes, it hands us some pretty sour lemons. And try as we might to make the best of it—to work harder and push through the mess—there are times when we are crushed by the weight of our problems. Sometimes, we fail.

Or so it seems.

Think about some of the biggest failures in your life. Looking back, can you see that they may not have been complete failures after all? Perhaps, when we failed, we taught someone else a valuable lesson. Perhaps someone learned from our pain and sorrow. Or maybe, by failing at one endeavor, we unknowingly avoided greater pain elsewhere.

When I went through my divorce 15 years ago, my husband and I carried a tremendous amount of guilt. We felt that we had failed—failed God, our children, our friends, our families, and ourselves. It felt like we were deliberately causing the death of our family. But the truth was, things had gotten so bad that we were no longer providing our children with the loving childhood they deserved. So, we walked through this failure together, keeping our children’s well-being at the forefront of our focus. We worked to give them the peace, security, love, and strength they should have had all along. We created a new life where they could finally experience a healthy, happy childhood.

So, even though we had failed at our marriage, we were able to build something better for our children.

Isn’t that how life goes? For every yin, there is a yang. For every negative, there is a positive. Let’s start focusing on what we bring to this world and stop labeling every mistake as a failure.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Michael Jordan quotes:

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
— Michael Jordan