There's a collection of great quotes that say something along the lines of "failing is good." Here are a few examples:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas Edison

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill

“Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely.” - Henry Ford

All of those quotes sound really great because they provide failures with a whole lot of hope. The thing, though, is that the only reason we get to read these quotes is because Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, and Henry Ford are not failures, and because they're not failures, we want to hear what they want to say.

This week, I whole-heartedly identify with all you epic failures out there. I ate my own encouraging words to "go do good" and "just try" and let me tell you, it made me sick to my stomach. So sick that I began to question if I had always been sick but was just now noticing it. I began to question if there was any medicine out there. For those of you not following my metaphor, I'm basically saying that feeling like a failure made me question if I was a good person, If I had ever created any good around me, and if there was any way to ever be good at all. 

My apologies to Edison, Churchill, and Ford, but failure is not fun. Failure is not good. Failing means messing up, dropping the ball, and missing the mark. Failure is the moment when you stop trying to climb up and realize that you were the one who let yourself down.

So why do we have hundreds of quotes from hundreds of successful people telling us the opposite?

I guess it's because they did not let their failures define them and they kept trying even though they had no reason to. I bet it was only when they got to the top that they realized their failures were actually valuable.

I am not at the top. Actually, I am far from the top.

But I do know that the only way to get there is to get up.