There's a lovely story about a woman who walks to a stream many miles away, fills her two clay pots with water, and carries them back to her house, dangling each pot from either side of a long stick draping across her shoulders. When she arrives home each day with the water, one of the pots is full, and one is half empty. The half-empty pot is all sad and feels like a big fat loser because it's got a crack in it, and it beats itself up for wasting water, for doing a bad job, for not being as perfect or effective as the crack-free pot. It tells the woman how ashamed it is, but the woman thinks this pot is doing a fabulous job and tells it how the world is a better place because of its crack.
She explains that the path to the stream she's walked every day for two years now has a stunning line of flowers growing along one side, thanks to the water dripping out of the pot. She tells the pot how much joy these flowers bring her every time she sees them and how they would never have been able to grow without the crack in the pot. She reminds the cracked pot that the side of the path with the flowers is full of life and color and bees and birds.
Everything in our "reality" is reflected to us depending on how we choose to perceive it. Your "flaws" are either strikes against you or part of what makes you unique and awesome-- it's your choice. Find beauty in everything about yourself instead of beating yourself up or deciding you suck because you're not like everyone else.
Not only is loving yourself a more joyful way to walk through life, but you never know what brilliance might sprout up from your temporary failures. You may wind up creating something far more beautiful than what you set out to create, and that you would never have even known existed if you hadn't "screwed up."
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