Setbacks are opportunities.

It is the way you respond to the challenges in life that is of prime importance. If you are given a challenge and immediately overcome it, you are no stronger. You have merely changed your ways. But if you are given a challenge that you are not immediately able to manage, but you try in your response to overcome, it is often the effort that provides the real source for growth.

Be willing to accept that there are challenges that you face that will not immediately be overcome. That is not failure. You don’t fail life. You grow with it. No one really fails. You may try to meet a problem and in the process lose everything. You haven’t failed, because your response is not finished after the loss. The growth which is essential is what you do after you have lost.

Welcome those opportunities when you are less than successful in your own eyes. Don’t look upon setbacks as failures. Consider them to be opportunities for growth. It is in the meeting of those challenges that the growth takes place, not just in the overcoming.

Life is full of these challenges. They may be problems of health, they may be problems of the spirit, of the mind, whatever. Try not to set for yourself a specific, identifiable yardstick that measures that your growth has been achieved. Allow yourself to evolve through the challenges that you encounter, but don’t try to measure them. Don’t try to evaluate your evolution. That is vain and ultimately serves no purpose.