We fall only to rise
Since my Mandela quote explantation was appreciated, I figured I would do another one that really touches my heart.
A quote Mandela made - The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
For me the problem is remaining at the bottom, that is.
It is a fact of life that everybody stumbles upon a stone sometimes. The crucial point is how you act in the moments right after all fails and you feel like there is no need in picking yourself up.
The vast majority of people consider failure to be some kind of defining quality of theirs. No matter how many mistakes we have made during our lifetime, nothing gives more wisdom than analyzing the reasons behind it and figuring out how to avoid repeating them.
During his 27 years of imprisonment Nelson Mandela was never broken. Why is that? Because he decided not to succumb to his surroundings and situation. There is nothing heroic in that. On the contrary, it takes more courage and willpower than anyone would expect to stay alive despite all the obstacles.
You might consider resilience to be a natural feature inherent only to some people. Actually, it has little to do with genetics but much to do with a person's inner drive to keep striving regardless of how much he might suffer along the way.
Those who know that being persistent leads to success never wonder why everything goes wrong but immediately proceed to thinking about ways to change their strategy to reach their goal. It is to me a small step that makes for a huge difference.
It is your attitude to failure that defines you and nothing else matters in that case.
Each version of a better self is beyond a challenge, but not just one version, all of them. Every time you rise above an obstacle, you don't just restore yourself, but you create something new in yourself, something that will never leave you. The important thing is not to give up and keep on moving upwards.