Failure is a perception. Whether we notice or not, we as communicating human beings take what some people call “L”’s. You might be thinking, "Well this headline is extremely misleading," but the truth of the matter is that I simply do not believe in failure.

Take for example a simple conversation you have when meeting someone for the first time. You do not know this person’s interests, morals, political stance, etc., and therefore of nothing you may have in common. So what do you do? You start asking questions. Getting past the simple “where you’re from”’s and “what’s your major”’s, you begin to talk about commonalities you may have with this person. One thing leads to another and you go on a tangent about your past high school drama and how you cannot wait to leave and go to college, but you notice your energy is not being reciprocated. Your talking partner breaks eye contact, fidgets their leg, and takes a long breath. Clearly not feeling it. You could say you failed at keeping the person interested to the point of boring them. How could you do such a thing? Why didn’t you stick to talking about their trip to the Dominican Republic? Are you not capable of having simple conversation with another human being? If only you had another chance…you probably left and immediately started binge watching Netflix.

Of course, you didn’t. Instead of getting down on yourself, you picked up on these hints and found a way to somehow reengage the other person. Whether it was completely conscious or subconscious, you chose to move on from that minor adversity of your partner losing interest. In fact, you actually learned this person does not actually care about the shortcomings of your high school crush and that you probably should not lead with that when meeting new people. Wow. You preserved. Congratulations, you held a mutually engaged conversation.

One of the great things about being a human is that we can choose how to react to everything. Yes, there are times when we cannot control our emotions and rely on internet memes to cheer us up, but we eventually learn how to cope with pretty much anything. Even more so, we learn exactly how to avoid such emotional reactions in the future.

Failure is one of these choices. We can view getting cut from the tennis team, breaking up with a girlfriend, even losing someone’s interest in conversation as a “failure,” or we can view these events as opportunities to learn and gain knowledge.

Everyone always wants to win the way society sets up winning to be. The problem is that if we don’t get a job on Wall Street, become a neurologist, win the NBA finals, and earn six figures we automatically lose in the eyes of society…not necessarily in the eyes of each individual person and you, the reader. You can choose if you win or lose based on the parameters you set for yourself. Wins and positivity are everywhere, you just have to chose to find them. So stop complaining when there’s now wifi at a house party and crying that Lebron did not to go back to back because there is much more positivity and happiness waiting to be found.