There are many people running the US (Congress + Presidents + Supreme Court) who:
- Failed out of school
- Got fired
- Lost elections
- Had IRS problems
- Couldn't pay the rent
- Got cheated on
- Cheated on their spouse
- Had drug/weight/gambling/booze/sex/spending problems
What's the significant common denominator? They didn't dwell on a few minutes of failure.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/03/phone-hacking...
"<horrible person> admits to <mistake>"
The media aren't interested in honesty and wouldn't recognise it if they tripped over it in the street. They're interested in feeding the scandal machine. If there isn't any scandal, make one.
In any case, it's not very constructive advice. Telling depressed people that they shouldn't beat themselves up because it leads to failure just makes them beat themselves up for beating themselves up. IIRC, the best practice is to teach self-compassion: it's okay to be down on yourself sometimes; just let it happen and keep moving forward as best you can.
I don't have this problem with your advice specifically, but with this type of advice on the internet in general. Everyone tells people what they should do, but there is no how they should do it. (I've had the same problem with the limited books I've read, and haven't gotten much advice from people.)