Hi, my name is Travis and I'm a failure.

You might think I'm being hard on myself but I've failed at a lot of things in the course of my life so far and I'm sure I'll fail at many more things. I consider myself to be a somewhat competitive person and I love winning just as much as the next person. However, I've learned that failure isn't the scary word we've all believed it to be.

To give you a sense of some of my many failures so far I'll list a few. I wanted to be a millionaire by the age of 30 and now that I'm at that age I'm nowhere close to that goal. I wanted to graduate from college with a 3.5 GPA and didn't even get in the ballpark.

I wanted to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger as a child and I don't look anything like a bodybuilder today. I've failed at being a good boyfriend, employee, writer, student, son, friend and just about everything else at some point or another in my life.

As a society, we put such a value on those we see as being winners, that we forget about all their failures along the way. You don't become great or achieve things in life by having no challenges. Challenges and failures are what propel us forward and help us better ourselves.

Failing opens up new doors and new opportunities. By quitting previous jobs it opened up the door to the current great career that I have. By failing at my previous relationships its made my current relationship that much better. Every time you fail you learn something that you take with you and you improve on what you failed at.

I'm no longer ashamed of my failures and learning to embrace them and realize that they are inevitable. Failing is a good thing, it means you tried something and gave it your all and it didn't work out for any number of reasons. You'll learn from the experience and it will make you a better person.

Don't be afraid to take a chance, get out of your comfort zone, try crazy things that people will tell you won't work or can't be done. We only move forward by doing the things that make us uncomfortable and are hard.

We all have that voice in the back of our head that tells us not to do something, that people will laugh at you and say it can't be done. Challenge that voice and realize that it doesn't matter if you succeed or fail. All the great people that have succeeded in life have also been great failures.

Fear holds us back from doing what we really want to do and not having the fear of failure is liking having a superpower that will enable you to achieve more than you ever thought possible. Wear your failures with pride and enjoy this roller coaster we call life.