During the 2018 Winter Olympics, I had my face glued to the television for the past few weeks watching the events taking place. I am in such awe of how amazingly talented these athletes are.

It is also crazy to think of the thousands of other athletes that train and compete in each sport that do not make it. Not because they do not work hard enough or because they are not talented, they are, someone was just more talented when it came time for competition on that specific day.

I was a competitive figure skater for eight and a half years of my life. So, as you could probably guess, I have especially been paying attention to the figure skating events. I have been watching and critiquing, even though I have no place to be doing that because obviously, I am sitting in Tuscaloosa writing this, and not in South Korea competing.

One of the skaters I have been watching, Nathan Chen, was someone who was favored to be on the podium and bring back a medal for team USA. However, when it came time to compete, he completely crumbled. First, it was the team event when, even the commentators said they had never seen him perform so poorly, then the individual event where he self-destructed. If you have no idea what I am talking about, go ahead and go here to check it out.

The moment that stood out to me that was so poor of Chen, was in his post-event interview. When asked about what he needed to do to figure out what was going on and how to fix it for his long program, he answered by saying he would have to talk to his team to see what was wrong.

BACK IT UP.

First of all, team events are over. It is now time to individualize yourself as a competitor. It is not your team's job to help you figure out what is going on and why you keep falling. And the biggest reason why it is not their job is that they cannot tell you why you keep messing up. Only you can do that because no one knows you better than you.

But, that is not the point I am trying to make today. As the world saw on February 16, Chen landed a stunning amount of 6 quad jumps, scoring the highest in the long program performances and a new personal best score for himself. Because of the short program, he barely missed the podium, but he made the comeback that no one saw coming.

He was someone that everyone, including himself, saw untouchable on the podium. He thought he was invincible and at the biggest competition in the world, he was knocked off of the podium he placed himself on, both literally and figuratively.

Nathan Chen is a great example to show us all that failure is inevitable. It may be minor, or like Chen, it may be while you are at the top of your game. To me, it seems like right when we think we are killing the game and on a roll, something happens to show us that we are all bound to have some sort of failure to show us that we are not perfect or invincible. AND THAT IS OK.

Everyone fears failure because we do not like to put something forward that is not our best, but the second we start getting into the mindset that we are immune to failing is when we are in the most danger.

With failure though, you have to look at yourself to fix the issue. You cannot look to other people because failure is an internal issue. No one else can help you, they can motivate you, but they cannot fix the issue for you. That is where you have growth. Learning from your mistakes and figuring out why they are being made.

I want to encourage everyone that while we should not strive to fail because that is obviously not a good way to go about things, we should not be afraid of it. Sometimes failing is something we need to humble ourselves. Sometimes failing is something we need so we can learn more about ourselves. Sometimes failing is something we need in order to continue to grow.

Nathan Chen came back and beat his personal best score after his most humiliating performance at his biggest competition. That is a true example of successful failure. He was able to figure out what kept going wrong in order to get mentally and emotionally tough to skate a clean program.

That is an example of how failure can be beneficial to your life. Because right when it happens, it can show you where your strengths and weaknesses lie and how to continue to grow from there.