Does anybody ever really acknowledge the good you are?
Do you know the good you are?
Do you know?
I remember having a moment thinking,
I'm now, for the rest of my life, going to be called a bad girl.
I really don't belong here, and I don't even know how this happened to me.
That I am in a place for bad girls, because I didn't feel like I was a bad girl.
So the question is, what do you believe?
Do you believe that you are worthy of happiness?
I know that if you allow the past to define your present,
that you never actually really get to live the life that you need to live.
You are responsible for your life.
And if you're sitting around, waiting on somebody to save you, to fix you,
to even help you, you are wasting your time.
Because only you have the power to take responsibility, to move your life forward.
I had failed on an epic scale.
An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent,
and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain,
without being homeless, the fears that my parents had had for me,
and that I had had for myself had both come to pass.
By every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I'm not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun.
That period of my life was a dark one.
For a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure?
Simply because failure meant us stripping away of the inessential.
I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was,
and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.
Had I really succeeded at anything else?
I might never have found the determination to succeed
in the one arena where I believed I truly belonged, I was set free.
It is impossible to live without failing at something,
unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all.
In which case you fail by default.
So given a time turner, I would tell my 21 year old self:
that personal happiness lies in knowing that
life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement.
Your qualifications, your CV are not your life.
Though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two.
Life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone's total control.
And the humility to know that will enable you to survive its specificity.
So the question is, what do you believe?
Do you believe that you are worthy of happiness?
Do you believe the happiness, success, abundance, comfort,
fulfillment, peace, joy, love is a part of your birthright.
Is that what you believe?
Because you will manifest the life that you believe!
I've always known that no matter what my belief is, I'm going to be the white.
When you do well, people notice, when you do your best, people notice.
And so wherever you are, always do your best and doing your best,
put you at the next level.
It's about what can you do.
You just need to run that race as hard as you can.
You need to give it everything you've got all the time for yourself, for yourself.
As it's a tale, so is life, not how long it is, but how good it is is what matters.
What matters is now, this moment, and your willingness to see this moment for what it is.
Accept it, forgive the past, take responsibility.
And move forward, this is your second chance.
This is your opportunity to seize this moment and make something in your life.