The Three B's
In 1983 a man named Steven Callahan set out alone on a small sailboat, chasing a dream across the Atlantic. Six days in, something slammed into the hull in the dark and ripped the boat open. Water surged in faster than he could respond. Within minutes he had no choice but to abandon ship with nothing but a small inflatable raft, a spear gun, a few tools, and almost no food or water.
He drifted alone for seventy six days.
Sharks shadowed him. Salt sores covered his skin. His raft tore again and again. He dipped in and out of hope, sometimes by the hour. He later said there were moments he felt death trying to reason with him. Trying to convince him it would be easier to surrender than fight.
One night, as he worked to patch the raft yet another time, he realized something that changed the outcome of his story. His circumstances were brutal, but his response was still his to choose. His mind hadn’t been taken. His will hadn’t been taken. Even in that nightmare, he still had agency.
He wrote in his journal, “I can let this destroy me. I can let this define me. Or I can let this teach me how to live.”
That line became the hinge his life swung on.
It’s the same hinge every one of us eventually relies on, because none of us move through life mistake free. Without a shadow of a doubt we will all make decisions we wish we could take back. Some more than others. I fall on the heavier end of that spectrum. While there is nothing we can do about the past, it is essential that we learn from it.
One thing I have challenged myself to examine is how often my poor choices are made out of fear. I’ve come to believe that most of our worst decisions are driven by a quiet panic inside us. A fear of losing something. A fear of failing. A fear of being judged. Shame, embarrassment, and insecurity steer more reactions than we realize. They slip into the moment so quickly that by the time we recognize what we’ve done, the damage is already there.
Working on these tendencies is a good start. Even so, mistakes will still happen. We are human. Which means the real question that decides everything is this:
Are they going to break me, brand me, or birth me?
Break
A mistake breaks you when you refuse to face it. When you cling to pride. When you protect your ego instead of your future. When you point outward instead of inward. That’s what actually causes the fracture. Not the mistake itself, but the refusal to own it.
When someone plays the victim, the event owns them. They hand over the steering wheel. They let the moment dictate their identity, their confidence, their decisions. I’ve watched people unravel not because what they did was unforgivable, but because their unwillingness to take responsibility slowly hollowed them out. A person can recover from almost anything except denial. Denial turns a single moment into a slow collapse.
Brand
A mistake brands you when you let it become your identity. You wear it like a scar you believe you deserve. You rehearse it in your head until it becomes the only way you see yourself. You judge every new opportunity through the lens of something you did years before.
It’s the difference between saying “I failed” and “I’m a failure.”
One is temporary.
The other is permanent.
I’ve seen people let one moment cast a long shadow over their entire life. They allow a single decision to rewrite their confidence, their self concept, their future. They forget that one action is just a snapshot, not the whole story. When you let a mistake brand you, you hand it authorship it never earned.
Birth
A mistake births you when you decide that it will not be wasted. When you choose to look it directly in the eyes instead of turning away. When you let it show you something about yourself you needed to see. When you let the sting carve clarity instead of shame.
The most potent lessons life offers often come from your own missteps. As much as we prefer to learn from others, the reality is that nothing sharpens your values, your judgment, or your boundaries quite like your own experience does. A mistake that births you doesn’t just teach you what went wrong. It reveals who you no longer want to be. It forces you to draw a line in the sand. It invites you to step into a new level of maturity, humility, and resolve.
When you look back on the moments that shaped you the most, chances are the easy seasons didn’t do the heavy lifting. It was the moments that required a response. The ones that took the wind out of you. The ones that made you look in the mirror and ask, “Is this who I want to be from this point on?”
Our lives are shaped less by the mistakes we make and more by the meaning we attach to them. A mistake handled with honesty becomes clarity. A mistake handled with humility becomes strength. A mistake handled with courage becomes birth.
You have far more control over your story than you think. Not over every circumstance. Not over every outcome. Not over every consequence. You control the response. And that response becomes the turning point.
As you think through the moments you wish you could redo, remember the man alone on the Atlantic. The sharks. The storms. The torn raft. He couldn’t control any of that. What he could control was the meaning he chose. The response he chose. The identity he chose on the other side.
His survival came down to a single line he wrote in a rain soaked journal:
“I can let this destroy me. I can let this define me. Or I can let this teach me how to live.”
Today’s Forced Challenge: I want you to FORCE yourself to attack at least one of these challenges:
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Name the real fear: Identify what you were actually scared of when you made the choice. Losing approval. Losing comfort. Losing control. Naming it takes away its power.
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Claim ownership quickly: Say the words “I messed this up.” No softening. No excuses. Ownership is the first step toward recovery.
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Study the pattern: Look at the belief, insecurity, or habit that led you there. Patterns point to roots. Roots point to real change.
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Set a clear boundary for next time: Write one non negotiable line you refuse to cross again. This becomes your guardrail.
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Share the lesson with someone you trust: Speaking it out loud turns shame into clarity. It makes the lesson stick.
In the quiet moments after a fall you learn what you’re really made of. Not in the victory laps. Not in the easy stretches. In the places where you’re forced to choose what comes next.
Every stumble carries an invitation to rise a little stronger, stand a little taller, and walk a little clearer into the person you were meant to become. Your story isn’t held together by perfection. It’s held together by the courage to keep going. Every time you get back up you prove that nothing in your past has the authority to write your ending.
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
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