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Looking Back with Grace
I often look back at my time in Nashville with a smile, especially that first summer I spent with six friends who were interning or working in the industry. We were young, free from most adult obligations, and, as cheesy as it sounds, full of dreams. I grew an incredible amount during my nearly three years there.
One of the most beautifully painful and refining experiences was starting a company with someone in that friend group. We were young, and in the back of my mind, I knew that it probably wouldn’t work. But we didn’t have anything else going on and it was something to try. Well, it didn’t work out, and I ended up moving to California and starting a new time of my career and life.
It took nearly two years, but I’m starting to look back on those painful times with grace. We were young, we both made mistakes, and I know what I could have done to improve. This self-reflection, paired with the personal growth that’s happened since I’ve moved, has helped me begin to view this more as a time of extreme growth and less of a massive failure.
I always say that failure isn’t a failure if you learn something. Learning through failure is the only way we grow. If life is easy and seemingly perfect, we won’t learn. This means that an un-scientific estimate of 99% of personal growth comes through painful experiences that we probably want to erase from our…
