I recently had one of those days that something crappy happened (in this case, I got back a less than ideal exam grade) and it impacted my whole day. After I got the test grade back, I was upset and continued the negative mood into my next lecture and the rest of the day, snowballing until I was in a really poor state of mind. What started out as a bad test score turned very quickly into a bad GPA, struggling to find work, and the thought that I was failing at life. I thought that if I only worked a little harder at everything I did then maybe I wouldn't suck so much. Each little failure from the past came creeping up in my mind, reinforcing the idea of my inadequacy.

But then after a reassuring conversation with my mom, I realized that all those failures that were haunting me, they aren't going to mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Because I am greater than the sum of my parts.

The fact that I am a bad test taker doesn't impact who I am as a person. It doesn't mean I am not hardworking or that I don't care about school because you can bet that I studied for that test as hard as I could. Just because the job market sucks and no one wants to pay someone without a degree doesn't mean that I don't have goal or ambitions, I just have to maybe wait and put in my time. If I do get a lower GPA this semester, I am not going to fail in life.

For every thing that I don't get right, there is an equal amount or even more things that I do get right. Even a few things thrown in there that I hit out of the park. Messing up every once in a while does not change who I am as a person. It just means I am in fact, human. Every one has the days that they think less of themselves, it's natural. When you have that day that you want to collapse in a heap, try pulling on those memories of your most recent successes, the times you felt on top of the world, and remember, you will get back to the top soon.