I had a shocker of a day yesterday. I won’t bore you with the details, but it ended up with me standing centre stage bawling my eyes out in front of 36 onlookers. How embarrassing.

At first I was really confused as to why I was exactly upset. Even though I was trying to convince myself that nothing was wrong, something clearly was. Somewhere and somehow a connection was made that caused an emotional reaction out of me. And that thing is failure. I failed to do a good job on my performance. But as soon as I realised this, I started to feel better. Sounds weird, right?

We as humans have a terrible relationship to the word ‘failure’. Failure is one of those people you went on a hopeful date with that ended with disaster. You don’t talk about it much but think about it from time to time. Did I do something wrong? Could I have made it better? Is it going to happen again?

When we fail at something we put a bunch of negative connotations on ourselves. Stupid. Foolish. Worthless. We associate ourselves with these things without hesitation. We fail one thing then begin to imagine a world where we are abominations and our lives are in shambles. It’s a domino effect. We’ve all done it.

But failure isn’t any of that. Failure just means that you didn’t get the outcome you wanted. That’s it. That’s literally it.

As long as you can honestly say you gave it your all, you should celebrate the fact that you tried. Congratulate yourself for being brave and vulnerable. Every day we put ourselves on the line and fear for the worst – but failure isn’t the end of the world.

Tell yourself that failure is okay. Grow from it. Let it inspire and empower you. Be positive. We are all much more than the ridiculous labels we put on ourselves.