You Have to Fail to Succeed

I am thankful for all of those who said NO to me. Its because of them I’m doing it myself.” – Albert Einstein

I love this quote. I think no matter who we are and what we desire to do with our lives, we are going to be told no. I know I've heard that word many times. But think of it this way, you have to reach you're quota of "no's" before you can receive that one "yes" that makes your dream possible. 

Here is a quote from the book "How to get Ideas" by Jack Foster, It's brilliant. 

"People who have failed. They know that failure's never permanent. Too often, people who haven't failed at anything think that failure's a disaster, and so they're afraid to go to the edge of what's possible."

The most important thing is simply to never give up. That's one thing I've learned through my many failures. Here is one story of mine that lead to something really great, after something that was totally devastating. 

I tried out for American Idol in Idaho falls. It was a small town audition in front of some producers, I made it through. So I traveled to long beach CA for the next audition. The audition was again in front of producers. There were two rounds, the second in front of a panel of British judges. Including Nigel Lythgoe.  If you made it through that round you would advance onto the show in front of  the celebrity judges.

I told myself I would be fine if I didn't make it on the show. I also told myself I wouldn't cry. I was wrong in both instances. I sang in front of them, but nerves got me. They were pretty nice to me luckily (they hadn't been to other auditionees) and just simply said it wasn't strong enough. And that was that. 

I left the audition room, tears in my eyes and cameras in my face. That was the toughest part. I HATE crying especially in front of people. I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I didn't realize how much this meant to me until I had built up my hope and then got it torn back down. Those little thoughts like "It could be me." "Why not me?" are what get you. I thought maybe I was special and they would see it. 

It was a fairy tale not very many people get to live, and once I had a few days of clear vision I realized that this isn't the way for me to make it. But I WILL make it. 

That's when my album comes in. I've always written songs and poetry, and ever since I could talk I was singing. My good friend Randy who is also my producer came to me after hearing some songs and wanted to help me record them. I told him a bit about my vision of the album and we decided we would need to have a budget to make this album the quality we wanted it. 

So we got to work and put together an Indigogo video with the help of my brother Tyler (who filmed and edited the video) We were able to raise the money for the album and also released a single. We are super close to getting the album totally finished. (Give me a moment while I do a happy dance!)

Basically the moral of this story is, don't give up.  Failure is a very important part of success because that's where you truly learn how to not be successful, thus learning how to be successful. Failing somehow stirs something up inside of us and we begin to fight and create and stumble and learn and fight some more until we have created some sort of beauty that seems so simple and attainable once you've arrived, yet it took so long to get there. It's worth it, I promise. 

I could write about this subject and share so many failures of mine with you, but I think you get the point. Stay beautiful. Keep trying.

Sincerely, 
Me

Pictures from the day we auditioned in long beach CA, at the Titanic's sister ship,  Queen Mary.  

Jake and I both made it to Long Beach! And I have brown hair, (weird).

Jared is super cute and supportive. The perfect combination. :)