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According to a new book called The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed by Jessica Lahey, part of the reason that feeling stinks so bad is because girls have learned how to process failure differently than boys based on our classroom experiences. Lahey says that girls are more often shielded from making mistakes and failing, but being protected from our own failures by our parents makes us more scared to experience it on our own.

Time reports that, in school, teachers are more likely to correct girls' mistakes based on their abilities while correcting boys' mistakes based on their behaviors. This means that when girls fail, they tend to view it as a failure of ability rather than related to any outside factors. For example, not making the soccer team could make you feel like you're not good at soccer, whereas a boy might feel like he just had a bad day. When you feel like failure is totally your fault and not something you can change, it's harder to overcome.

In a study Time shared, fifth grade students were provided with an assignment that was designed to be confusing, and therefore hard to complete. In the study, girls performed more poorly than the boys because they were more likely to interpret their confusion as the inability to understand the task. Even crazier? The girls that had the highest IQs had the hardest time.

The thing about failure, though, is that it's a natural part of life—and, even more importantly, it's a learning experience. We can't all be good at everying we try, and sometimes we fail, whether it's on a history test, the basketball court or the stage. If we can separate ourselves from the belief that our failures are tied to who we are, rather than what we've done, we can use them as opportunities to get stronger, better and smarter.

So the next time you have a total fail, just remember this: that fail is really one more win in the grand scheme of things. Don't let it get you down.

What failures have you faced in life—and what have they taught you?

by Ilana Bernstein and Chelsea Duff | 2/1/2016