From a study titled Mitigating Malicious Envy:
People are reticent to reveal their failures–both as they are happening
and after they have occurred. However, in two experiments, we find that revealing successes and
the failures encountered on the path to success (compared to revealing only successes) decreases
observers’ malicious envy.
What that means is, when you talk about your failures people aren’t jealous in a bad way about any success you’ve had. It increases empathy for you. The study says that revealing failure is “a counterintuitive yet effective interpersonal emotion regulation strategy”.
When we share our failures it helps others realize that maybe their own failures maybe aren’t all their own fault. Driven people tend to figure that any failure is because they didn’t do enough, and they ignore any environment or other impacts that may have contributed to the failure.
It’s not all about you, sometimes things fail despite perfect effort and execution from you. Keep going.