In this chaotic world of hustle culture and societal expectations, we often forget to look back at our achievements. Here’s a reminder today to start focusing on this.

When you reach a milestone, celebrate how far you’ve come! Look back at all the hard-work you have put in now that is has paid off. This works for any kind of milestone, too, whether that’s in the professional, personal or emotional sense.

It’s easy to dwell on the past, and all the times we’ve failed and not bothered to get back up on our feet. This is important to remember too: always get back up. Never get defeated by failure. Again, like pretty much everything I talk about here on Pepetoe, failure is a social construct. In the real world, there is no such thing. It’s an abstract concept. We can define it however we want to, and, even better, we can always avoid it.

How do you define failure? If I had to describe it, I would say the following: failure is the lack of success, or, the incapability to meet certain expectations.

We tie failure to our self-worth and self-acceptance. When we “fail”, we feel like we’ve let everyone down around us, especially if we relate it to the workplace. We also let ourselves down, and I think that’s what failure is all about and that’s why we feel that crushing feeling when we fail to meet those expectations – the expectations we create for ourselves.

No matter what anyone says, we are our own “sabotagers”. In other words, we are very good at being self-destructive. It’s funny, isn’t it? We are the people who put us down. We are the people who believe we are not good enough. Let’s change that narrative.

So, I challenge you to instead of focusing on the negatives and the “failures” we face in life – though there are no true failures, only mistakes, which become lessons – let’s focus on the good. Celebrate those achievements, no matter how big or small, and if someone tells you that it’s a ‘small achievement’ or doesn’t mean that much, take a step back from that person and celebrate it anyways! We are all unique and deserve to be proud of ourselves. Do just that. Right now. Feel proud of how far you’ve come, even if you don’t think you’ve changed that much or done that much since leaving school, uni, or your last job. You have. And let me tell you, you are flourishing ❤️

Signing off,

Pepetoe x