Pay close attention to how failure feels and how you respond to it. Failing at something does not mean that you are a failure. Within the mind, an acknowledgment must occur that what we are is separate from external circumstances. What happens in the outside world is dependent on the internal world within man. Keeping the door open or closing it is the game being played. We tend to avoid and navigate around the inevitable without realizing that the goal is to have a full understanding of a thing.

“As above, so below, As within, so without, As the universe, so the soul.”

— Hermes Trismegistus

A shift takes place in the adventures of failure. When we are moving through something difficult in life, we go to the storehouse and grab supplies to assist us in the upcoming journey. These supplies are units of energy that we have placed within ourselves from self-investments. In our travels through the valley, knowing how to be resourceful with rations of energy is crucial to reaching our destination. Be the commander of your ship so that you don’t get lost at sea. We grow feeble and go to pieces without a plan of action for how to maneuver through unfamiliar waters. When adrift, a voice whispers, acting as a GPS only heard by the one on the journey. Life gives us what we ask of it, like the genie in the lamp, but the gift lends its value to our ignorance of what we think we know.

Failure is an uphill journey that requires momentum to not roll back downhill. When we fall, it is imperative to stay there to observe how we got there. It is at the bottom where beginnings happen. Beginnings lead to endings, and endings create new beginnings. All progress is progress, and each step is a step, for it all adds a piece to the whole. Dissolution of who you think you are sets natural laws into motion. For those who persevere through failure, a prize awaits on the other side called freedom. Failure is inevitable and requires an act of surrender; otherwise, force creates more force. Befriending our fear is the key to understanding what the storms are in life.

The conversation is the place where one lives and dwells and cannot be escaped, just as failure can not. These conversations are to give you a safe place to see yourself and to elevate in what you are meant to be. We either die to parts of ourselves within our failure, or we perish in physical death to who we could have become.

Failure is yours to choose.

Letroy Woods can be reached at letroywoods@gmail.com.