When I was younger, my favorite thing to do was draw. I would do it for hours. Sketching something, hating it, ripping it up and starting over. Something that should have taken me ten minutes took an hour because it just was not good enough. When I would show my family, they would tell me how great it was, but I would not believe them and end up throwing the piece away anyway.
All my life I thought I had to be perfect. Be the perfect child, get perfect grades, and be perfect in sports. This caused a lot of stress and pressure that I did not know how to handle. It led to a decrease in my self-confidence, and I started being less vocal and outgoing. I stopped participating in class out of fear that I would be wrong.
It was not until recently that I truly accepted the fact that you do not have to be perfect. You just have to be you. Our whole lives we have heard people say that nobody’s perfect, but sometimes it feels as if some people are pretty close. We all know that person who seemed like they could do no wrong. It could have been a classmate, teammate, friend, or even sibling. The truth is, they have their flaws just like everyone else. Comparing yourself to others can lead you to forget what makes you, you. Everyone has different strengths and differences. That is what makes us all so special.
Making mistakes is just a part of life and a really important one. You can not truly be successful without knowing the feeling of failure. That feeling when you get rejected, you do not get the job, you miss the game-winning shot, or you fail a big test, is the reason you get back up and try again. Almost everyone who has ever succeeded at anything can tell you their story of failure. Bill Gates’ first company was a disaster and Walt Disney was told he lacked creativity. I have been playing basketball for a large portion of my life and an important quote I was told by my coach sticks with me to this day. Michael Jordan said, “I missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.”