Mistakes are the portals of discovery. James Joyce

In life, we’re obsessed with success. We’re obsessed with being more successful than our friends and family. We define ourselves by our success, or lack thereof. But hand-in-hand with our desperate need to succeed, is a paralyzing fear of failure. And that’s a problem. If you’re afraid to fail, you’ll never succeed.

If you treat your mistakes like sins, if even the idea of making a mistake terrifies you, how are you going to achieve your dreams? (Spoiler alert: You won’t. You can’t. Because the mistakes are part of your dreams.) they are part of your learning curve.

Not to mention…what’s so bad about failing? Nothing, when you understand that failure only comes when you give up . As long as you don’t give up in the pursuit of whatever it is that makes your heart beat faster, you’re not a failure. I, personally, have endless respect for people who have put their lives on their line and are going for it, since I know first-hand how terrifying it is. People who make mistakes, and fail, and pick themselves up, and wipe away the tears — that’s not failure, that’s life.

Making a mistake and learning from it doesn’t make you a failure; you learned something! Now, go apply that knowledge and experience to your life, and keep going. Keep learning.

Failures, on the other hand, are people who make a religion out of excuses and can tell you exactly what they’d do in “a perfect world,” but right now, sorry, they’re busy, all that porn on the Internet ain’t gonna watch itself. (Actually…) I especially love people who say stuff like, “Well, in a perfect world, I’d be a writer like Robert Stone, or a director like Lee Daniels…but you know, that’s impossible.”

Hmm. And yet you just named someone who is doing exactly what you want to do! So is it “impossible,” or is your punishing schedule of boozing, pills, cry-for-help Facebook status updates, and Candy Crush not leaving you much time to write?

That, to me, is failure: someone who makes excuses for his or her dreams because it’s “easier” to stay miserable. People like that have really committed to their self-loathing. Imagine what that commitment could do for their dreams. Imagine.

Maybe the problem is that we have this societal fantasy that success is a destination. Some people seem to seriously think that you’re SUCCESSFUL and a bell rings and suddenly you step into a world that smells like baking cookies, and the men and women are all hot, and unicorns and kittens roam free, or something. Whereas in reality, success is a really long journey with many, many moments of fear, frustration, exhaustion, anger, more exhaustion, crying under the covers, and some good times when you break through. And more crying.

Nowadays, with social media, we can see, on a real-time basis, our peers getting engaged, having children, getting promoted. All of which makes our (perceived) “failures” much worse. If you were just able to enjoy your own life, the good and bad of it, you’d probably think it was pretty damn good. But then, you go on Facebook and you see one friend got engaged, another just purchased a house, a third got married or is going to Thailand, and suddenly you think,”…wtf is wrong with me, I’m such a loser.” Just remember that you’re seeing the director’s cut of other people’s lives, as you live your unedited version