Grace in the Restart: Why Beginning Again is Brave

By Cassie Rodriguez, LSW

As we end the year 2025 and go into the year 2026, a lot of us may be thinking about starting fresh and resetting aspects of our lives. Starting new can feel like starting over and be accompanied by negative feelings of self. I was inspired to write this blog from a place of professional and personal experience to emphasize that when life resets, starting again is a strength, not a setback. The emphasis on making resolutions, having big goals, and being your best self can feel overbearing and overwhelming. How can we set goals or feel our best until we work through emotions of failing, change, and anxiety going into a new year?  Setting goals can be a source of motivation, and not reaching them can lead to significant anxiety, depression, and anger. This blog will explore how we can use perceived failure as a strength and not set back. 

What is failure? To start, I encourage you to allow yourself to reframe or replace the word “failure”. What would it mean to acknowledge the ways we want to move forward without ignoring or staying in the past? Can we choose to disagree with someone else’s definition of success? 

From a young age, we learn about and experience moments of losing, falling short, and failing. A lack of success or not being able to get to where we want to be can leave us feeling less than, hopeless, and helpless. Exploring the source of this definition (family of origin pressure, societal messages, etc) can begin to free us from shame.

What failure can really be:

• Learning

• Growing

• Missing an opportunity because a new one is right around the corner

• A catalyst for change

• Building resilience

• Becoming self-aware

• Being able to problem-solve

Here are examples below of people who have “failed” and you would never know because they were able to have grace and restart their journey repeatedly:

1. Pro basketball player Michael Jordan- cut from his high school basketball team (Beckman, 2024).

2. Best-selling author Stephen King- Stephen King's first book, the iconic thriller Carrie, was rejected by publishers 30 times (Beckman, 2024).

3. Film director Steven Spielberg was rejected from USC’s School of Theater, Film, and Television three times (Beckman, 2024).

4. Oprah Winfrey- Oprah Winfrey was actually fired from her first TV job as Baltimore’s WJZ-TV news anchor (Beckman, 2024).

These well-known individuals, by definition, have “failed”. However, they took their anxiety, their frustration, and their hurt to help them redefine what failure means. They were able to have grace in the restart of their new journey and have the strength to not fear failing again. SMART GOALS are a great way to help set specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals. These goals can help you plan steps to meet your short-term or long-term goal for the new year and help fight emotions of failure if you have a set plan.  Setting small, achievable goals is how we begin to believe we are capable of succeeding even after failure. 

As we go into 2026, it is so important to remember that failure is a part of every journey. Shame tied to failure is difficult and might feel like nothing ever changes. Feelings of failure are often rooted in our universal dislike of feeling out of control. We strive to set and reach goals, and no one wants obstacles or to see others get there faster than we can. In therapy, we practice taking it one day at a time, one moment at a time, and we focus on writing your own story. That story will likely have what you would previously call failure in it, but we can learn how to cope and regain a sense of control. 

Graceful Therapy would love to help you go into a new year with new tools for how to cope and remain confident and hopeful through the difficult aspects of starting fresh!

Call 630-733-9108 to set up an appointment with one of our therapists and start the next chapter, truly giving yourself grace. 

Sources:

Beckman, T. (2024). 10 famous people who failed-and then bounced back. Brainscape Academy. https://www.brainscape.com/academy/famous-people-who-overcame-failure/