“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
The Duality Of Failure & Success.
Isn’t it interesting to think about how many things we have failed at versus where we have succeeded?
Maybe it’s a cliché that the list of where we failed is almost always longer than where we succeeded.
The rub, though, is supposed to be that failure is the other side of success- the yin and yang cosmic duality of accomplishment.
…Also, it’s what you say to make the person “failing” feel better.
Mixed Feelings
But it’s not as simple as that every time.
At least, not in my life.
Overall, 2025 was a pretty good year for me.
It was the year I turned 20, the year I read more books (for more hours) than any other year of my life, the year I got to come live in Japan, the year I climbed tall mountains and dove into oceans, and a year full of learning about myself (insert here “glow-up”, sparkling emoji, and green juices).
Well… actually, by “learning about myself”, I mean bucketloads of tears, doubting if/why I was behind all my peers in every domain of life, wondering why I wasn’t proactive enough to get an internship, wondering if I really have what it takes to be a good leader, wondering why the people who have ghosted me ghosted me, etc.
You get the idea.
It has been, in a lot of ways, a year full of failure- and not the failure of motivational speeches.
I’m talking about the unaesthetic, don’t-send-that-picture-to-ANYBODY kind of failure.
But you know what?
Facing The Inevitable
Today I want to honor where I failed, where I fell short, and where I lost.
Not to pressure you into “doing something” with your own failures, but just to highlight and underline one very underrated message as we step into the new year: failure is part of it.
Your plans will change and people will disappoint you.
Sometimes the person disappointing you will be yourself.
You will take too long to answer someone’s text message.
Maybe you will not give enough effort to something you care about.
You will feel like gum on the bottom of someone’s shoe.
You will miss a few workouts and get rejected from a long list of jobs, internships, opportunities, romantic prospects, and potential mentors.
Continue on nevertheless.
#1: I failed at getting a summer internship.
Throughout my freshman year, I took for granted that whatever I did over the summer would be inevitably impressive, resume-boosting work that would pay me handsome sums of money which I would then put to use in some equally braggadocious, but deliberately subtle way.
It would be all “this summer I interned at Tesla designing cars that run on discarded paper napkins and emit rainbows instead of smoke”, or “this summer I launched a startup and raised $1 million in VC rounds”.
Otherwise, I guess I kind of hoped to conduct a breath-taking 4 months of scientific research that would warrant a Nobel Peace prize.
Okay, okay, let’s be realistic.
Perhaps I could at least write the next great American novel?
(Deep, wistful sigh.)
I’ll skip ahead to the end of the summer, in which none of those lofty fantasies transpired.
Meanwhile, I got to scroll through LinkedIn and see that many of my peers had accomplished internships of their own.
Social media being the insecurity-laser that it is, that felt awful, no matter what I did do (like knit a scarf for my dog!).
#2: I failed at reading 500 hours.
A year ago, at the start of 2025, I set a goal to read 500 hours by the end of the year.
It seemed like a nice, round number- a big number divisible by 5, but I wanted to see if I could do it.
In the end, did I?
Well, the short answer is no.
The long answer is that while I failed at achieving my 500 hours, working towards it led me to read more in 2025 than I have in any year before that, totaling 297 hours for the entire year (not counting mandatory reading for school!), which averages to about 49 minutes a day.
So was it a win? Yes.
Did I fail? Also yes.
#3: I failed in some of my relationships.
This year, I lost some people who were very dear to me, some who ghosted me suddenly without explanation, and some who drifted away gradually.
It wasn’t always my choice, and I’m certainly not unscathed by the loss of the people I care about.
Good years, important years, I learned, are still peppered with expired relationships.
Why?
Because part of growth is sometimes growing apart…and as much as it hurts, that’s okay.
As your Pinterest board would probably tell you, every ending is also a new beginning, so maybe the failure of one relationship opens us up to the success of a new one.
Perhaps it will even open you up to a better relationship with yourself.
#4: I failed in my fitness goals.
I moved to Japan in August of this year as part of a study abroad program with Minerva University, and I was thrilled.
Before this year, I’d never stepped foot in Asia, and so much about living in Japan for an entire academic year would be new territory.
So far, I have had a lot of twists and turns along the journey, from unearthing the soul-warming power of a big bowl of ramen at 3am in downtown Tokyo, to running away from city deer in Nara (terrifying, in case you were wondering).
I have learnt how to say essential phrases like “I have no money” and “Your dog is cute” in Japanese, and have thrifted with greater thriftiness than ever before (trench coat skirt for $3, anyone?).
But on top of these unexpected wins, there has been kind of an unfortunate loss- my gym membership.
Is it unfortunate that not having budget-friendly gym options comes at the same time as me eating more ramen and rice balls than at any other point in my life?
Yes.
Have I categorically failed at the fitness goals I set out for myself?
Mostly.
I tried replacing a gym membership with resistance bands and a yoga mat in my room, plus a 30 day run-everyday challenge, which went fairly well.
Still, it just wasn’t the same.
It worked out sometimes, but I got busy and didn’t develop a good routine around it. What I miss is actually going to the gym and doing strength training.
So, in the end, it was a fail.
How I’m Accounting For Failure In My 2026 Goals
Even at the end of a good year, there will be a list of things you failed at, things you could have done better but didn’t.
So let’s stop letting it surprise us.
The New Approach
In 2026, I’ll be doing a few things differently. Here are the 2 main changes, and why I chose them:
#1: Designing my environment to make failure less likely. In 2026, I’m going to make a few small, one-time changes in my environment which will hopefully reap me many benefits.
For example, one of my goals for this year is to cut my screentime on my phone in half. (I did the terrifying mortality-math, and even three hours a day on my phone is just under ⅛ of my entire life, and that’s a little too much for me.)
One of the easy ways to make my environment reinforce this is by setting app limits for those addictive online comfort blankets like YouTube shorts.
I have that in place, and get the obnoxious “you’ve run out of your daily allotment of doomscrolling” hourglass once I have passed the limit.
Another killer of any enthusiasm I might’ve had for my phone is to set it to greyscale. It’s torture for my eyeballs, but it makes me want to go out and enjoy the fresh air.
#2: Keeping score. Codie Sanchez talks about this on her Big Deal podcast. Confidence doesn’t come from dopamine, she says. Instead, it comes from data.
In 2025, I did not take tracking to the psychopathic level I should have, but when I did track, such as when I tracked my spending, how many hours I read each week, or even doing time audits of my day, I actually felt motivated and did better at whatever I was aiming for.
This year I’m taking it to the next level. There will be spreadsheets, and sums, and quarterly targets, and you better believe it will be both scary and rewarding by the end.
And guess what?
In 2026, I hope to fail even more!
Thought To Action
- Run a Failure Audit: Write down where you fell short this year without reframing it. No silver linings. Just facts. Clarity is kinder than denial.
- Lower the Cost of Trying Again: Change one thing in your environment that makes repeating the effort easier—fewer clicks, fewer steps, fewer excuses.
- Keep a “Proof Log”: Track effort instead of outcomes for one month. Pages read. Applications sent. Workouts attempted. Confidence grows from receipts.
- Practice Uneven Accounting: Let success and failure coexist on the same page. Growth is not tidy, linear, or polite.
- Continue Without Restarting: When you miss a day, don’t reset the goal. Resume. Momentum is built by continuation, not perfection.
Sources
No external sources were used for this post.
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