Hello there. This was totally unplanned, but here I am writing another post on Friday.

I’ll be honest with you. This week I sorta slacked off. I wasn’t nearly as focused on my writing as I wanted to be, and I didn’t really do much of anything else either. With that being said, I don’t consider this week a failure at all. Well actually, I do, but that’s okay and I’ll tell you why!

I think from a young age most people are taught to avoid failure. Whether it was because a parent would come down hard on you for a less than amazing grade, you would get laughed at for getting a question wrong in class, or the pain of rejection was just too much to handle, we quickly found out that failure is bad. And is this a wrong line of thinking? Of course not. Nobody wants to disappoint their parents, or be embarrassed by their class, or be rejected. That’s natural. It’s expected. However, I argue that failure can be so much more.

Last night, after a long and mostly unsuccessful gaming session, I decided to end on a high note and watched Meet the Robinsons with my girlfriend. A couple of my friends had been talking about it, and I hadn’t watched it in a while, so I said what the heck and threw it on. I was surprised by how well it held up from my childhood.

The whacky and eccentric dynamic of the Robinson family served as a great way for the main character, Lewis, to fully embrace his more creative and ambitious side which he had begun to lose after a slew of failures with his inventions as well as his search for a family that would accept him. The inspiring mantra of “Keep moving forward”, coined by the mysterious partiarch of the Robinson family, came at an especially low point for Lewis, who was ready to give everything up.

The Robinson family taught Lewis to embrace failure. Failure was never the end. It was the stepping stone to success. No matter how many times you failed, it was just an opportunity to gather your bearings, see everything you’ve done wrong and right, and try again. Keep moving forward.

I believe that message came at a very important time for me as well. After last weeks message of just keep going, I found myself in a position of failure after failure. I think it’s very easy, even after knowing in your heart and in your mind that failure is never the end, to really let setbacks get to you. It’s important, whether you know it or not, to continue to remind yourself that it’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to have setbacks, it’s okay to fail, as long as you don’t allow it to discourage you.

So I call everyone who reads this today to try something new. Keep writing that story, go up to that person who you have a crush on and ask them on a date, speak up in class, try to beat that PR in the gym, but most importantly, let it be okay to fail. And in the words of the Robinson family, Keep Moving Forward.