I Gave Up Med School — & Ended Up With The Confetti Project

Jelena Aleksich has built a movement from an unlikely combination: cancer and confetti.

Created while her father was dying from cancer, she went on a journey to find the things to celebrate in life — the silver linings in even the darkest situations. Her project has profiled hundreds of people, asking them what they celebrate.

In this episode, Aleksich shares some of the failures in her life that drove her to create an entire project dedicated to the silver linings. From what it was like to fail at school for the first time in her life, to failing her pre-med classes when her life plan had been to become a doctor. As a result, she had to shift her perspective and embrace her failures.

Aleksich's advice on failure? "If something good happens or something bad happens, if it is a fail or if it is a success, treat it the same way," she says. "Having that awareness that this is temporary but also trying to find the lesson." Watch her talk about her ups and downs in life in the video above.

The Failure Project: Life isn't glossy; it isn't Insta-perfect. But at any given moment there are a million reasons not to feel like you are good enough, from being late to your hair appointment to your weight to your work to school to your personal life — and everything in-between. It becomes all too easy to look at the shiny perfections that social media offers us and take it as the real story. But it's not the whole story. We gathered some inspirational and aspirational people together to tell us the things that don't make it to social media. The moments they failed, the times it didn't work out, what they've learned along the way. Our goal? To start a conversation about failure, and celebrate the other side of the journey.