Monday Musings: Dealing with Failure

Hello Beautiful Ones!

Here we are again.. another Monday and another post for me to spill out the insides of my mind (brace yourselves). Lately I've found myself thinking a lot about failure. As some of you might know I recently graduated from college and have found myself living at home with my parents while looking for a full-time job. During the course of my job hunting I've faced a lot of "we're going to pursue other candidates," or "your qualifications do not match up with our open positions at this time." Everytime I read or hear one of those phrases from potential employers I can't help but feel like I have failed.

Failure feels like such a harsh and scary word. When I think of failure I think of the end. Like failure is the final stop in the road to get where you're going. It's so easy to think, "well now that I've failed I'll have to quit or try something new." Failure and rejection are extremely difficult to face.

I know from first hand experience how painful facing failure can be. I'm not just talking about my recent adventures into the jungle that is job hunting. This past year while I was still a senior in college I made the decision to apply to grad school. I applied in December to four different schools and by May I was the proud owner of four different rejection letters. I was crushed, not only did I have my heart set on going to grad school but I was left with absolutely no idea what was next for me. I can vividly remember crying my eyes out in the shower. I've wavered on whether or not I should re-apply.

But the problem is that if we quit we allow failure to dictate our lives. If we give up we don't get to continue our stories, we don't get to see if there is a happy ending in the subsequent pages. As we have all heard a thousand times you often don't get to enjoy success without experiencing failure first.

I've decided that I'm not giving up and I'm not going to allow failure to control the choices I make in my life; I'm going  to use my failures as learning tools that will help me get exactly where I want to go. I'll leave you with a famous quote on failure by Winston Churchill that has kept me going these last few months "success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

Please don't give up beautiful ones.

XO- Brittney