How do you keep moving forward?
Have you ever seen Disney's 2007 Meet the Robinsons?
In Meet the Robinsons a child named Lewis goes through an adventure through time to see his future, both positively and negatively. Lewis feels like a failure after a science fair presentation goes explosively wrong. Yet, the future family he encounters has a celebratory attitude about failure. They see it as a great way to move toward something better.
We sometimes get ourselves down by dwelling on our failures. While they should be reviewed and learned from, they shouldn't take up all of our attention. When we move forward, our attention should be on what lies ahead, not what lay behind. That is why windshields on cars are so much larger than the rear view mirrors. It matters considerably more where you are going than where you have been.
I encourage you to take some steps next time you encounter failure. Take a notepad, write down what went wrong and steps you can take to avoid such failure in the future. Once you've done that, place it somewhere that you can see it next time that same failure may arise. Having that reminder may help you catch the same steps in the future and prevent the failure. More importantly, writing it down helps get the failure out of your mind so you can focus on the path ahead. Keep moving forward.
Experience mistakes and failure. Learn from them. Improve from them.
Don't be defined by them.