I see writing my autobiography as a chance to reflect on my life so far AND to see where I'm headed. It may seem weird, but I write this to hopefully motivate others to write/record their stories and to encourage them to live their lives to their fullest. This way their stories will be more meaningful and encouraging to others reading.

In writing about my past, I always see areas for improvement. I feel that when I examine my life, my limitations pop out.

My face still flushes when I recall certain events in my life. I still blush at various failures.

How can failure have so much power?

The programming against failure starts early. "Make me proud," our parents said. "You'll do great!" "Don't embarrass me!" "Don't embarrass yourself!"

It continues as we go to school. Grades are based on successful execution of assigned tasks. Experimentation is discouraged. Even in Science class, where experimentation is supposedly encouraged, your final grade is determined by your ability to come to the right answer. But what if you discover something new in the process? No matter. You failed to get it right.

But failing is more than clear black and white. More than right or wrong answers. Failure even happens in areas arbitrarily established by society. Failure includes falling short of others' preconceived notions of success or failure.

Too often, success means living up to someone else's definition of what it means to succeed. It seems that just about everyone has a definition of success. And they're not afraid to tell you, or, even worse, impose their definition on you.

Even, sadder is when we stop trying new things. When we're younger, we try new things almost daily. It's part of growing up. But then, at some point, we stop trying things. We start fearing failure. We ask, "What if I fail?" instead of "What if I succeed."

We're scared. It's so sad.

Well, I saw something that changed my view on failure. Turns out that YouTube has other things besides stupid people doing stupid things. If you look, you can find some very inspirational stuff. If you do a search on 'Sara Blakely' you will find a video about Sara, the founder of Spanx. She explains that part of her success comes from her father asking her and her siblings what they had failed at in the previous week.

That's a powerful question.

The question about succeeding encourages mediocrity. The children would be tempted to try only things at which they knew they could succeed.

If you're not afraid of failing, you'll try new things. You'll find areas of success where you never dreamed possible.

Have you truly fallen short recently? Truly?

I'm not talking about going out just to fail.

I'm saying try something different. Try something out of your comfort zone.

What would you try if you knew you couldn't fail? Well, try it anyway.