Fortes fortuna adiuvat!
I was pouring my heart out to my lifelong friend when she calmly asked, "So you failed, what are you going to do about it?"
I admit it: I poorly prepared myself for life. Dealing with failure was never on my agenda because I never expected to fail. I always figured I had my life sorted out, carving a legacy of my own into the stones of humankind. I thought I would do great things because I was raised to do great things. That, in fact, never happened – not from my vantage point.
Acknowledging failure means understanding that we’re not there yet—that we’re still making the same mistakes and repeating the same patterns. It’s humbling, almost brutally, because it forces us to digest a hard truth: we are not victims of our circumstances, and that much of this is, in fact, our own doing—our fault.
Accepting failure doesn’t mean giving up on our dreams. It means making the brave choice to recognize that our current way of living will never help us achieve them. One of the most difficult consequences of embracing failure is that we stop blaming others for it. No one pushed us into that toxic relationship with someone who treated us like shit—we chose to be there. No one made us stay in that demeaning job, tolerating a manager who disrespected us—that was on us. No one forced us to stick with friends who made us feel uncomfortable or out of place—that, too, was a choice we made.
Once we take responsibility for our failures, we can transcend to the next level: identifying our own actions that led us there. And if we’re smart—or lucky enough to have wise friends, like I do—we can start spotting the patterns. As those patterns unfold before our eyes, we begin to better understand ourselves. That understanding might even lead us to love ourselves and treat ourselves better. This process eventually brings us to a simple life mantra: we’ll always choose what is right for us.
With this clarity in mind, we develop a sense of goal alignment and a clearer path forward. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the “Growth Phase.” And like any growth phase, it comes with growing pains. But accepting all this with humility is, in itself, an act of bravery.
One things I found out about myself recently is that I am brave. I face my fears and work through them with the help of my support system, whether it’s family, friends, or therapy. Bravery isn’t about jumping through hoops of fire or taking a bullet for a loved one. It’s about accepting ourselves at our lowest, loving ourselves even when we believe we deserve only hate.
Bravery is being kind to ourselves, it’s choosing to nourish our souls, admitting we were wrong, working on our failures, and resisting unhealthy coping mechanisms. Bravery is accepting that we’ve failed at the things we believed we’d succeed in the most. Bravery is steering ourselves back onto our path after drifting away from it. It’s understanding that failure is our own doing—we chose poorly, acted foolishly, selfishly, and sometimes even cowardly.
Bravery is acknowledging that at some point in our lives, we really fucked up and then finding a way to reconcile this. Bravery is embracing growth, even with the accompanying pain. It’s accepting that we won’t always be someone’s first choice—and loving ourselves despite that.
That’s why Lady Luck favors the brave: those who take risks, accept failure, and keep striving for better lives, and above all, are endlessly evolving.