As a born overachiever, I'm no stranger to the race toward perfectionism. I want success, I want to feel accomplished and I want to make it all seem effortless. Life, on the other hand, doesn't always let that happen. I'm very proud of the things I've accomplished in life, but I've started to realize that most of my successes wouldn't have come without a few speed bumps along the way.

This is a love letter to those mistakes. An ode to missed opportunities and all of the times I've fallen flat on my face. It's easy to celebrate success, but I want to take the time to examine my failures. After all, those played just as a big a part, if not bigger, in making me who I am.

See, it's failure that drives us to do better. To be better, stronger, smarter. It's being told "no" or having a door slammed in our face that sends us back to the drawing board, often creating a better plan for ourselves than what we'd originally envisioned. It's falling down that forces us to get back up, dust ourselves off and move on to Plan B.

Sure, you might be disappointed. You may even feel sad for a while, but I promise that everything happens for a reason. The pain and confusion you feel today are just making you stronger for tomorrow. If everything in life were handed to us on a silver platter, there would be no drive for us to grow. The last thing I want to be in life is stagnant. I want to be ever evolving into a better version of myself than I am today.

There have been plenty of times I've fallen down and tricked myself into believing I would never get back up. It's such an easy thing to become disconnected from yourself and jaded by the world around you. To wallow in self-pity and look all the ways the world has wronged you. But eventually, the clouds clear, and you realize that life will go on. And that moment — the moment when you wake up and realize that the world hasn't stopped — that's where the magic happens.

I've always had a picture-perfect vision of the way my life would end up. The job I would hold, the husband I'd have, the house with the white picket fence I would live in. I nailed it down to a science, the perfect timeline that would get me right where I wanted to be. I had it all figured out, crossed all my T's and dotted my I's.

And I was completely and utterly wrong.

Life doesn't follow a plan. Life is messy and unpredictable, and that's part of what makes it beautiful. You can plan and plan and set up the perfect path for yourself, but the truth of the matter is life is going to throw you curveballs.

So I want to say thank you. I want to thank the boys that didn't think I was worth their time. I want to thank my past relationships, the ones I was so certain would be forever but didn't work out. I want to thank the jobs I didn't get and the colleges I didn't go to. I want to thank the mistakes I've made — big and small — and the times I've bitten off more than I can chew and had it thrown in my face. Thank you to anyone who has ever told me, "No," or, "Not right now." Because failures and missed steps that felt like the end of the world at the time were necessary parts of my life story to get me to where I am today.

I am strong. I am independent. I am driven.

But I truly believe I wouldn't be any of these things had life not knocked me on my ass a time or two.

So the next time something doesn't go exactly according to plan or you don't get something you want out of life, sit back, relax and breathe. It's all going to be OK. Take the time to examine where you are and where you want to be, and ask yourself if there's another way you could be going about it. Odds are you'll come to realize that the door that just slammed in your face wasn't the one you were meant to be walking through anyway.