Just recently, I found the courage to do something that I thought I’d never let myself do.

A year ago, I gave my senior performance with my orchestra, but in a quick mistake, I fumbled through 20 seconds of the piece, missing every single note in that frame. I recovered, barely, finishing the piece absolutely shaken. It was the culmination of months of practicing, and in my 6 minute performance, the entire piece was lost in that very moment.

I couldn’t bear to watch the video. My dad showed me the footage, insisting that I upload it onto YouTube and share my performance. It took me a month to watch that footage and upload the video, but even then, I left the link unlisted, intending for it to be an untouched shrine of the past that would stay in the past, left to be forgotten. Friends who couldn’t make the concert asked if they could watch it, and I waved them off, insisting it wasn’t even that good, it wasn’t worth their time watching.

And that was that. Until now.

In the span of this past year, I’ve picked up a couple things about that feeling of failure and hiding from yourself with that feeling as an excuse. While that performance is far from my best, I like to think of it less of an utter failure than a marker in my pursuit in music. So I’ve publicized the video I despised a year ago. While it’s not an award-winning video for my “Most Musical Performance,” I now know that putting this video out there means a lot more to me, personally, than if it were lost in cyberspace forever.

From failing to complete an exercise plan, to falling short or even giving up on a startup idea, I’ve learned that there’s nothing wrong with embracing failure, and it’s far more important to be comfortable enough to share what you have, regardless of whether it’s at its best. Here’s why:

1) Come to terms with your current ability.

By recording and publishing your performance, whether it’s a speech, project, or musical performance, you create an artifact of your progress at that moment. This process keeps track of your ability in the moment, and you can use it as reference, not just to improve, but also to look back and note how far you’ve come. Why do apps and softwares constantly bring out new versions and updates? They establish the tone that they’re constantly fixing and reconsidering their product. It screams progress.

2) Everything is momentary.

Don’t put off what you’ve been working on in the fear that it’ll be better later, but not now. If you want to push yourself, exposing your progress will drive you to make improvements on what you already have, leaving the worse draft quickly behind. Consider it as a photo album of your progress. What you capture now isn’t a representation of your current self, but of your past self, which shows that by putting yourself out there, you’ve already moved on from that point. So preserve the current moment. What you do next will build on what you already have.

3) Expose yourself.

Some work is better than no work. You’d be surprised with how many people are willing to help you if you have even something to show them. If you’re feeling self-conscious, remember the golden rule: people care way less than what you think they do. While sure, there may be harsher critics out there, but they’re only a fraction of your audience. You’ll never know who will go out of their way to add their own input, the ones that’ll push you along your goal that you ultimately want to achieve. After all, exposure brings more eyes, and that entails a diverse audience with so many perspectives.

There’s always the argument to be made that anything unfinished or imperfect is a failure, but whether we let that hold us back is really up to us. It took me a year to get over my fear of exposing something that I wasn’t proud of, but I realized, by sharing, I’ll look back and recognize that it was myself in the moment, even if it wasn’t my best then.

And let’s be honest. Even as I share my performance and thoughts with you, I still feel a part of myself wanting to pull back, to leave publishing off for another day. But it’s putting myself out there that will keep me going. I have to remind myself that in the end, all we’re really left with two options: 1) embrace our current abilities and choose to share and 2) hold back on what we may never idealistically attain.

So hit ‘Publish.’ Press the record button. It’s time to shed the skin of embarrassment and self-consciousness and let the exposure (and in turn, yourself) drive you forward.