Happy Thanksgiving, peeps.  There was nothing really interesting today in the news (my house is more interesting – my younger brother shot a goose this morning about a football field or so away from here) so I wanted to post a really good article by Tynan of BetterThanYourBoyfriend.com.  I’m not sure it will resonate with you guys the way it did with me, since “failure” as a concept is something I spend a lot of time thinking about.  I ended up forwarding this to my friend Aaron.  Now I’m forwarding it to all of you:

(BetterThanYourBoyfriend.com) I love failure. When it occurs, I’m pretty indifferent to it, but as a concept I love it. Failure lets you know that you’re doing something wrong. It shines a light on a personality trait that needs to be fixed – one that probably would go unchanged if it weren’t for failure.

People who fail and get angry are missing the point. Failure is opportunity. It’s like getting angry that your car tells you you’re low on gas. The indicator light isn’t the problem - the level of fuel is. Further, hiding the failure doesn’t solve the underlying problem. Disconnecting the indicator light won’t fill up your gas tank, but filling up your gas tank will turn off the light.

During my tenure as a pickup artist, I never took failure personally. It never mattered to me. Each time I failed, I felt as though the girl had revealed a secret to me. No attractive girl is chaste her whole life, no girl is a bitch to every guy. If she didn’t want me to call her, that meant that there was something unattractive about me that I had to change. Compliments and success stroke my ego, but honest critical feedback leaves me thinking for months.