There was a time in my life when what other people thought of me really bothered me.

There have been TONNES (hahaha) of times in the last 3 years when I have considered quitting because those people who dislike me would find me, leave me crappy comments and tell me and the rest of the world what a bad person I am.

Because I had a business that failed. Yes, it failed and caused a whole pile of heartache. Yes, it was my fault. Yes, I made tonnes of mistakes. But that was years ago and I truly believe that people are allowed to make mistakes.

Those same people now still read all my blog posts (this is for them really by the way in case you didn’t get that) and criticise everything I do.

And I don’t care any more. I really don’t.

I actually think it’s quite funny that so many years after I had an impact on their lives that they are still watching my every move and wasting so much of their time and energy on me. Makes me feel quite important sometimes.

And so this is to tall anyone who has failed that you can get back up and try again. You don’t have to stay down just because you made a mistake once. You don’t have to listen to what anyone else thinks of you and you do have the right to keep on going.

You can use words like hustle and tonnes and if people don’t like it well that’s their problem really.

If you had a child that was in trouble for bullying (for instance) and who made a huge effort to get away from that reputation and turn their life around would you still torment them about it 3 years later? Would you say to them “well to be fair my lovely 14 year old you deserve to be treated badly by your friends because you did bully that child 3.5 years ago, remember?” Of course you wouldn’t - except maybe these women would.

Anyway. Moving on, and I have moved on. It’s not nice to think of every step of your life being analysed by people who are just waiting to see you fail. But it makes me more determined to not fail.

December is shaping up to be my best month this year, and I’m proud of what I’ve achieved over the last 12 years since I first dipped my toe into the water of self employment. If I could do it all again I would, but without the mistakes of course. That’s the benefit of hindsight.

The whole point of this blog post is to say it’s OK not to succeed first time. It’s OK to have people who hate you. It’s OK not to care about them. And it’s OK to be amazingly successful second or third or one hundredth time around. Which I will be.