You made the wrong choice. You picked the wrong career. You fell in love with the wrong person. You trusted the wrong friend. You moved to the wrong country. You messed up and had to start all over. So what?

We beat ourselves up over these wrong choices that could have changed our lives indefinitely — or so we think, we wallow in our misery thinking that we’ve wasted the most important years of our lives because we didn’t know any better or we didn’t think things through. We feel stuck because there’s nothing else that can be done to the damage we single-handedly caused but the truth is every wrong choice, every mistake, every fallout had a purpose, a crucial one too.

The truth is every mistake taught us exactly who we needed to be, maybe different choices could have led us to easier paths but if we break it down we will realize that it’s not so bad after all. That now we are armed with lessons, experiences, trials, and errors. That now we’re bruised but we still feel whole. Now we know how to find meaning and purpose in our work. Now we know that not everyone who claims to love us actually means it. Now we know that friends can betray us just like our enemies. Now we know what surviving in a place where we don’t belong feels like. Now we know how to grow, how to endure hardships, how to count on our wisdom and intuition to guide us and now we know how to fix our mistakes instead of letting them break us.

Now we have something money can’t buy; experience. We can say we’ve seen it all or maybe not all but we’ve seen enough. Now nothing takes us by surprise or shocks us like it used to. Now we’re clever enough not to blindly trust people with our hearts. Now we know what a scam feels like, we know when an offer is too good to be true and we know how to read between lines.

Maybe learning these lessons took a toll on us but we did it and we’re still here, learning how to heal, learning how to move on, learning how to do better, and learning how to protect ourselves but above all this, we’re still smiling, we’re still hopeful, we’re still seeking love, success, adventure, and happiness.

So maybe you made a bunch of wrong choices but you didn’t give up on yourself and that’s all that matters because the only right choice is fighting for your life. The only right choice is not letting your own misguidance veer you off course forever because your pain has a purpose and for everything you lose, you learn how to win yourself back and that’s the greatest victory of all.