Nobody knows us better than we do... We know what we want to do, and what we don't. We know what makes us happy, and what makes us sad. We know what excites us, and we know what bores us. We know what encourages us, and we know what discourages us... and of course, we know our good qualities, and our bad.

I was once told that for every success, there are at least 3 more failures.

However, with this philosophy lies a danger... the danger of weighing your failures against your successes. It can become very hard not to look at the scale and see 9 failures vs 3 successes, and it is not hard for us to let that scale tip in favor of the negative.

The danger in this, is that we pay so much attention to the negative things in our life, that we forget to look at all the blessings we have received. We focus so much on what's wrong with us, we forget to see what is Right with us.

We look so much at how we fail ourselves, our friends, and God, that we forget to see how He has used us. We forget to see the impact that we have had on others lives. We forget that God has a plan for us, and will carry out His will if we trust Him to (Jeremiah 1:5).

One of my favorite movies is It's a Wonderful Life. A story about a man named George who hates his life, and hates his daily failures. He looks back on his life, and sees his failure at being successful, his failure at being a good husband, and even his failure at being a good provider for his family. But then he is given a chance to see life without him, to see life without his "failures."

Instead he sees a life without his successes. A life, where without his positive influence, the town had gone downhill. He realizes that he wasn't a failure at being a good husband, and that despite the number of times he had hurt his wife and fought with her, he was still the best thing in her life.

At the end of the movie, George realizes the many ripples he made in the water. Ripples that kept spreading and spreading. He realized that his friends and family thought of him as a success, even though he thought he was a failure. And he realized, that while his failures may have outnumbered his successes, his successes outweighed his failures.