“But I’m failing,” Michael said frantically. “I don’t feel like I’m building anything. I feel like things are crumbling around me.”

“We all fail,” the carpenter said. “It’s what we do after we fail that determines what we build in the long run. Some of the most successful people throughout history have experienced great failures, but they turned their great failures into great success. Most people don’t know that Walt Disney was once fired from a newspaper for a lack of ideas, and his first cartoon production company went bankrupt. Everyone loves Lucy but Lucille Ball was told that she had no talent and should leave Murray Anderson’s drama school. What would have happened if Dr. Seuss actually burned the manuscript of his first book, which he wanted to do after it was rejected by 27 publishers? And it’s easy to forget that Steve Jobs was fired from Apple at 30 years old, and that Oprah Winfrey was fired as a news anchor and told she wasn’t fit for television.”

“I didn’t know any of that,” said Michael.

“Yes, it’s true, and there are countless success stories just like theirs. I have worked in the homes of many successful people and have seen firsthand that everyone fails in life, but failure can be a gift if you don’t give up and are willing to learn, improve, and grow because of it. You see, failure often serves as a defining moment, a crossroads on the journey of your life. It gives you a test designed to measure your courage, perseverance, commitment, and dedication. Are you a pretender who gives up after a little adversity or a contender who keeps getting up after getting knocked down?

“Failure provides you with a great opportunity to decide how much you really want something. Will you give up? Or will you dig deeper, commit more, work harder, learn, and get better? If you know that this is what you truly want, you will be willing to pay the price that success requires. You will be willing to fail again and again in order to succeed.

“Alternatively, sometimes failure causes you to take a different path that is better for you in the long run. My son failed in his first job out of college, but that led to him finding his dream job. Sometimes we have to lose a goal to find our destiny. Sometimes a failure helps us see that we really don’t want that goal but we do want something else.

“Whatever path failure guides you toward, it is always meant to give you a big serving of humble pie that builds your character, gives you perspective, grows your faith, and makes you appreciate your success later on. If you didn’t fail, you wouldn’t become the kind of person who ultimately succeeds.

“I want to encourage you to see failure as a test, a teacher, a detour to a better outcome, and an event that builds a better you. Failure is not meant to be final and fatal. It is not meant to define you. It is meant to refine you to be all that you are meant to be. When you see failure as a blessing instead of a curse, you will turn the gift of failure into a stepping stone that leads to the gift of success.”

“So what do I do now?” Michael asked.

The carpenter’s answer wasn’t what Michael expected, but it was exactly what he needed to hear.