I think one of the hardest aspects of life is failure. Because with failure comes so many other emotions and so many different forms of pain. It comes with a brutal blow to your confidence. Am I good enough? Am I a joke?

It comes with anger. So, did everything I have ever done mean absolutely nothing? Why bother trying anymore? Cause all the hard work I put in was a joke, right?

It comes with anxiety. What if I don’t get over this and I stop trying forever. What if I am just a number who will never strive to be more than what people think of me. What do people think of me? It can’t be good. What if I am just someone who makes people laugh and what if I accomplish nothing. What if I never change the world?

I think it’s when we get hit the hardest, I think that’s when we must dig deep to figure out how the hell we are going to get back up. But with everything in life I think we have a choice. I think we get to choose what we become from our failures and our setbacks.

I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t a sore loser. As an athlete, my whole life I rarely have been able to lose with dignity. But it’s not a high school game I lost, it’s a lot of who I am and what I believed of myself. It's a real failure so now I must dig deep.

I can read hundreds of quotes on getting back up and hundreds of people can tell me it’s okay but I think you must start by saying this sucks. This sucks. It sucks to fail; it sucks to feel like you’re not good enough. It sucks to feel like people don’t like you; it just straight up sucks. So, cry, get mad, break down, and then we can move on to step two.

You know it sucks. You know it’s unfair; now you must choose to stay bitter or suck it the hell up and keep going. Know that it is not our large failures but our small successes that make us who we are. It’s making Julia smile when she’s crying. It’s getting your math test back and getting that B you were hoping for. It’s making someone else feel like they are not alone.

It’s our own ability to lead ourselves to move on to be okay without anger and bitterness. That is a success and you know what you do best? You prove people wrong. You prove that you can do this. You prove you can be a success where people think you couldn’t. You prove to yourself that you are not defined by the jobs you don’t get and the tests you fail, you’re a human capable of beautiful things if you have the faith to push yourself and try.

Life is bigger than our failures. Life is about who we choose to be and what we choose to do. No, you're right no one ever won an award for being kind, but no one lost anything either. Stay kind, stay passionate, and always believe in yourself.