You Aren’t A Failure

You aren’t a screwup. You are’t as bad as the little voice in the back of your head warns you.

You have to stop thinking of yourself as some kind of mistake. You have a purpose. You matter. Your feelings and opinions are valid.

Getting abandoned doesn’t mean you’re a screwup. You only have power over yourself. You can’t control what other people choose to do or how they choose to treat you. Leaving was their decision — and it might have had less to do with you than you think. They might have left because of separate issues they were dealing with in private or because of baggage they’re still trying to learn how to cope with on their own. Chances are, you didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t chase them away. You didn’t screw up. They did.

You have to stop assuming every bad thing that happens to you is your own fault. And you have to stop assuming little mistakes are the end of the world.

Failing once or twice or three times doesn’t mean you’re a screwup. It doesn’t mean you should give up on yourself. It doesn’t mean you’re talentless, worthless, an embarrassment. Even the most successful, wealthy, well-known people in this world have failed more times than they can count. You shouldn’t feel bad about messing up along your journey. Most of the time, mistakes mean you’re growing. They mean you’re taking risks.

It’s dangerous to consider failure a bad thing because failure is a part of life. You’re going to get turned down at job interviews. You’re going to get your heart broken in relationships. Just like you’re going to spill water on yourself — but that doesn’t mean you’ll never drink water again. You have to stop using your failure as an excuse to stop trying. You should use it as a lesson, as a teaching tool.

Remember, you’re your own worst enemy. The nastiest things you’ll ever hear about yourself will come from within your own mind — which is why you need to retrain the way you think. Learn to love and appreciate yourself.

Of course, that isn’t going to happen overnight. Spending a day at a spa or saying positive affirmations into the mirror isn’t going to reverse years and years of self-hatred — but it’s a starting point. It’s better than nothing.

You have to start treating yourself with more respect. Stop talking to yourself like a screwup and you’ll stop feeling like a screwup.

It’s okay to have insecurities, everyone does, but it’s not okay to obsess over them. You might feel like you can’t get anything right. You might feel like every time you try to help, you end up making things worse. You might feel like no one wants you around, no one appreciates you, no one really cares. But no matter how many things go wrong around you or how many mistakes you make yourself, you are not a screwup. You are not as bad as you’ve been convincing yourself.