Jennifer Olney is the Founder of GingerConsulting, specializing in working with organizations to create brand strategy, graphic design and creative marketing programs. Additionally, Jennifer hosts the #bealeader™ community and weekly #bealeader™ chat exclusively on Twitter. She also serves as a business mentor to individuals and organizations in need of leadership development and training. Reach Jennifer on Twitter at @gingerconsult or on her website.

We all fail. There is it. Simple and plain, no one has ever not failed in life. No one. It happens to all of us at some point in our journey. Not one of us can claim the moniker of perfection. We are imperfect in our own unique ways.

So I have to ask, why is it then that is so many of us take failure personally? Why do we take it to heart and attach “failure” as a label to ourselves? Processes fail, ideas fail, but failure is not a person. As I’ve said, no one is perfect, so why would we beat ourselves up for failures? Failures are a chance to learn what is not working, what isn’t “perfect” and change the game. If we didn’t failure how would know what success looks and feels like. Failure has to happen to find out where to adjust the sails and move us forward. Failure has to occur to move those toxic entities out of path so that we can see what we really need to bring us the life we were meant to live. Failure is not to be feared, rather embraced. I know that may be hard for many hear because of conditioning that to fail is a negative. And yes, failing is a great disappointment. You never want to fail. It’s not the intention. Our intentions are to be successful in our pursuits. However, if we didn’t have those failures – how do we know where we are in the game of life?

I look back at all the failures I’ve experience with great joy…yes…great joy. Why? Because I learned such valuable lessons. If I hadn’t failed I wouldn’t be here today writing this blog. Failure has brought me great success in my life. I’m grateful for failure now. It has flipped my world upside down. If my business partners hadn’t been total idiots…ahem…failed to live up to their expectations…that’s a better way to state that…then I wouldn’t have the successful clients and be blessed with such amazing success I have today. See how that works? To make that statement took me a long time to come around to this mindset. I would dwell on failure as a personal failing of myself, but I realized long ago, if you look at the failure as a chance to learn and move forward. You take failure as a moment of gratitude. You have two choices, spend time seeing failure as this depressing event or you can look at it as a wonderful gift that you have been given to see that you were sparred a lot of heartache and pain to be shown a better way. Our perception of failure and attitude of how we address the events makes the difference.

We are not failures, we not perfect either. We are people who fail with great success and see the rewards that failures bring to our lives.

Failure is just an event in life…it doesn’t define us.