Failure Or Success Takes Courage Either Way
OK, I love puzzle-solving – cryptograms especially! It takes courage (albeit a tiny bit admittedly) to come out and say I enjoy solving them every night — because I’m more than a little addicted to them … a lot more than is probably healthy! The other night I solved a great Kappa Puzzles cryptogram puzzle by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. It really resonated with me.
Here it is:
It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh
How true. When you set out to succeed in anything, there’s never a guarantee of a successful outcome. Either you fail, or you succeed. Whatever the result, the effort leading up to that moment took the very same amount of courage. It takes courage to try in the first place. It takes courage to keep going when failure stares you in the face. And when success finally arrives? That, too, requires courage—to own it, to continue striving, to avoid becoming complacent. Courage is the constant, whether we win or lose.
If at First You Don’t Succeed …
… then try again, harder next time. Look, nobody sets out planning to fail. We just fail to plan. And when failure happens, it can knock the wind out of you. It’s frustrating, even disheartening. But what separates those who ultimately succeed from those who don’t is persistence. That’s the part we tend to overlook when we talk about “overnight successes.”
J.K. Rowling was rejected by 12 different publishers before someone finally gave Harry Potter a chance. Thomas Edison made thousands of failed attempts before perfecting the light bulb. Oprah Winfrey was told she wasn’t “fit for television.” These are people we now admire for their success, but behind the accolades were failures—failures that could have been the end of the road if they hadn’t had the courage to keep going.
The truth is, failure isn’t the opposite of success. It’s part of it. The moment you stop seeing failure as a dead-end and start seeing it as a stepping stone, everything changes.

Where Does Courage Come From?
Whenever I’ve failed at something, my first instinct is to sulk. I sit and pout, feel sorry for myself, wonder why I “can’t do it.” I’ve thrown my hands up and said, “I’m not doing this anymore.” I mean it at the time. The frustration is real. But once I’ve gotten that all out of my system, something deep inside starts to shift.
There’s an invisible force within all of us—resilience, perhaps? A quiet but insistent voice that whispers, “Get up. Keep going.” It’s the same force that carried me through every setback in my life, the same force that rises up in people who refuse to let failure define them. Maybe courage isn’t about never feeling afraid or defeated. Maybe it’s about standing up one more time than you fall.
Psychologists say courage is like a muscle—the more we use it, the stronger it gets. Every time we face a challenge head-on, we train ourselves to push through the fear and doubt. And eventually, we realize that we’re capable of so much more than we ever thought possible.
It Takes Courage to Carry On
That’s exactly what I faced in my early days of sobriety. I failed the first time. I made it nine whole months, and then—just like that—I fell. The lapse lasted for two years. I told myself I had ruined everything, that I wasn’t strong enough to change. But deep down, I knew I had to try again.
It takes courage to start over. To admit you’ve fallen but refuse to stay down. It takes courage to believe in yourself when you feel like you’ve let yourself down. When that courage re-surfaced on January 17, 1998, I grabbed onto it with both hands and set off down the sober path again. And I’m still here, some 25+ years later, still walking that path. Still choosing courage, every single day.
No gimmicks. No magic tricks. Just a plan. A proven path forward. It might be just the push you need to quit your addiction to alcohol for good.
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Regarding My Puzzle-Solving Fetish:
But let’s talk about puzzles for a second. They’re not just a fun pastime. They’re a microcosm of life itself. Sometimes, we get stuck. Sometimes, we make the wrong moves. But if we keep at it, if we refuse to give up, we eventually crack the code. Maybe that’s why I love them so much. Because just like in life, every solved puzzle—no matter how tough—proves that persistence pays off.
If you love puzzle-solving as much as I do, and you’re NOT afraid to admit it … then check out Bored Boomers. They have large-print (so you won’t squint!) puzzle books for adults: Cryptograms, Word Search, and much more!
Final Thought:
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
— Winston Churchill
At the end of the day, courage isn’t about never failing. It’s about having the guts to keep going, no matter what. No matter how many times you fall, the courage to stand back up is what truly defines you.
And that’s what winning looks like.
If someone shared this post with you and you have courage to spare—if you want to succeed, if you want to break free—please give A New Sober You a try. It’s a 66-Day Program called “Life’s Better Sober.”