Adversity can really, really hurt. Let’s not create an illusion that it’s all sunshine and rainbows. It will try our values, test our patience, and challenge who we are as human beings. It’s no warm cup of cocoa on a winter morning.

But a warm cup of cocoa doesn’t make us better. A picture perfect day doesn’t make us better. We learn when we make mistakes. When we miss, trip up, face plant, and get caught off guard. At our very basic biological level, this is how we adapt. It’s encoded in us… and it’s seriously like a secret sleeping super power.

That is, of course, if we use them to our advantage. The nature of a mistake is not to tell us we suck. That we failed. That we’re not good enough. The nature of a mistake is to educate us. To give us the ammunition we need to become better. To take the challenge to earn greatness, out of something that once was not.