You are going to mess up.

That’s right; you will do some not-so-smart things in life. If you always take yourself too seriously, you will become a bitter person. You have to learn to laugh at your mistakes and faults.

I’m not making light of our mistakes, just that we need to understand we can’t change the past, and there’s no need to be destroyed because of it. If you can’t find humor in your shortcomings, you won’t find humor in other people’s shortcomings. And that makes for a miserable life because you will let yourself down, and others will let you down.

Those who can gracefully recover from mistakes will proceed to success. If you are always trying to avoid failures and mistakes, you will play it too safe. Part of stepping out further is having the courage to fail. When we beat ourselves up over our mistakes, we open the door to discouragement. And discouragement literally “disses” our courage to move forward.

William Arthur Ward said, “To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.”

One of my mentors, Paul Martinelli, once said, “I am so ridiculously comfortable with failure that it makes other people uncomfortable.” Now understand Paul is not speaking in cliches. He has been named one of the world’s most successful coaches in the industry, who, by the way, has personally made over 10’s of millions of dollars in his business.

Here are four ways to get more comfortable with messing up so you can be a success:

1. Play The Long Game

You can’t be successful without long-term vision. Life is like investing; the longer you’re willing to hang in there, the more wealth you can build. On the other hand, if you keep pulling out your investment on every bad day, you’ll never get ahead. Failure works best when you couple it with endurance. Those who are committed to the long haul best learn from failure.

2. Consider Failure As A Lesson For Success

We’ve all heard the famous line about Edison not failing 1,000 times to make a light bulb but learning 1,000 ways not to make it. But this is still a massive shift in perspective that most people fail to live out. The road to success is paved with failure. You can’t truly become successful without going through failures to get there. It’s the lessons we learn from mistakes that equip us with what we need to get better.

3. Never Give Up

Thomas Edison said, “When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.” The only way you truly give up is to give up. It sounds simple, but nothing is impossible until you give up. Once you give up, the possible slips into impossible, not because it is impossible, but because you have made it impossible. Those who are successful in life are those who don’t give up. We all face obstacles on our journey to success. Obstacles teach us how to become successful.

4. Make Sure You Have A Coach

If we don’t have someone we can go to when we’ve failed, we will end up alone and disillusioned. We were created for community; we are better together. The most successful people have coaches, mentors, and friends who help them through tough times. The toughest thing to go through is not tough times; it’s going through tough times without someone tough for us.

These tough people help us gain perspective, get encouragement, and hold us accountable when we need it the most.