By Apollos Abercrombie

Sometimes it’s GPA requirements. Other times it’s not enough practical experience to get an interview.

But more times than not, the thing holding us back is our own internal fear of failing. What if I told you we could use this to our advantage?

Let’s take a closer look at three concepts that will help us through the job search, the interview process, and for the rest of our careers: don’t be afraid to fail, changing our perspective on failure, and taking as many chances as you can.

1. Don’t be afraid to fail. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? But what makes this concept so hard for us to actually do? Do you expect to hit a home run on your first try?

Babe Ruth, one of the greatest baseball hitters of all time, had a career batting average of .342. Do you know what that means for us? It means that in the 8,399 times he went to bat, he failed 66 percent of the time. However, we remember Ruth for his home runs—714 to be exact. That’s an 8.5-percent success rate.

For us, that means if we fail at 11 interviews but connect on that 12th, then we are still just as successful as the Babe. A home run for us would mean getting that promotion, acceptance into our favorite graduate school, or that great job we could see ourselves doing even if we didn’t get paid. Let’s not look back at our 11 failures as holding us back. Let’s look at our one success that will propel us forward.

2. Let’s change our perspective. Life is all about perspective. This is what makes the idea of failure so hard to grasp. For instance, we tend to think our failures are somehow inherently connected to us—kind of like we failed because we weren’t good enough in that particular outlet.

What if I challenged you to change your perspective about failure and think of it as a learning curve or a manual to success? I know what you’re thinking: This kid is telling me that failure is good. No, not at all. Failure is something we should never be content with, but you can turn your negatives into positives and use your past failures as tools to succeed.

Do we say the same embarrassing things we did as a child? Do we act the same way with our new girlfriends or boyfriends as we did our old ones? Do we binge-watch Netflix during finals week again? The answer is usually no because we learned from our mistakes.

In these totally different areas, we failed but became a better person because we learned and adapted. Applying this concept, we can look at failure as not only telling us what not to do in an interview or business environment, but also teaching us what areas we can improve on.

Life is all about perspective. The human mind can make a hell out of heaven or a heaven out of hell, so choose wisely.

3. Take as many chances as possible. You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. Even though it may be hard at times, I urge you to keep trying.

Author J.K. Rowling was rejected by 12 major publishers before she could get the green light for the Harry Potter series. Steve Jobs was fired from the company he helped create and then overcame that defeat by bringing Apple back to the pinnacle of success. Even one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th Century, Thomas Edison, wrote that he failed nearly 9,000 times in the pursuit of his dreams.

Instead of waking up thinking about our past failures, let’s wake up and smell these new opportunities.

Editor’s note: This column first published in Harbert Magazine, which serves Auburn University’s College of Business.

Apollos Abercrombie is a senior in marketing at the Auburn University Harbert College of Business. The Maplesville native is the VP of Operations for the Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity, was a W. James Samford, Jr., Scholarship recipient in 2015, and will begin a career at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly after graduation this spring.