2017 was an emotional roller coaster of a year for me. I lost a beloved senior to cervical cancer in January, and it was heart-breaking to witness an incredible soul rendered powerless to pursue all of her dreams and aspirations.

On the other hand, I could feel myself slowly losing interest in my college major and the journey ahead. I was completely lost with no sense of direction. I simply felt static and indifferent toward my own future.

When certain areas of your life go wrong in the worst ways, you start to question yourself. You'll even be afraid to make decisions. You stop trusting yourself because your choices so far have only proven huge mistakes and wastes of time.

I just felt that everything had gone horribly wrong, and no matter how much I tried to salvage the entire situation, I was just falling apart.

Does all of this sound familiar? I'm sure I'm not alone in that fate.

It took a while to pick myself back up because I knew all these negative emotions had to go. I still have a life ahead of me to experience even more failures. In relationships. In my career. In all my personal goals.

The first thing I tried was self-reflection, which was absolutely essential. It was important to identify exactly what went wrong during the process. I often found myself lamenting all those non-existent decisions I wished I had made, which is utterly foolish but at the same time, common.

Everyone wants to be on the safe side, with a predictable or even guaranteed outcome.

It's like securing a job you may not enjoy entirely, even though it has a stable income. Or it's like being in a relationship whereby the other party is always on the "giving end."

The reality is that nobody likes losing.

Not even those motivational speakers who never fail to emphasize the importance of going through multiple failures in order to finally attain success.

Having your entire life laid out properly is ideal and secure, but you never know what can happen. Life in its entirety can never be predicted. It's cliché but true.

You need to ask yourself if you would be happy with how your life is right now. If not, what are you going to do about it?

For myself, I want to start making decisions based on my desires despite the big and scary risks ahead. I want to have my own perception and be willful for once, though that may upset the people around me. I want to start getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Showing my vulnerability to others is something that I have always struggled with because I firmly believe that nobody has time to listen to your sob stories. It makes me feel like a nuisance.

However, being able to express your thoughts is an extremely intimate behavior. And your listener should feel blessed to be able to witness this side of you. Do not be embarrassed because we all have issues and we're all human.

Stepping outside your comfort zone does not necessarily mean you need to start jumping off cliffs or traveling to foreign places.

It's your heart you need to open up, not your actions. Sometimes, minor changes or adjustments must be made to have a more fulfilling life. You need to be able to experience actual growth, to take it along with you in the form of valuable life lessons you can abide by.

We are our own critics, maybe even the worst of all.

Start treating yourself well and acknowledge the fact that uncertainties and failures are essential to the whole shebang. Stop beating yourself up over it and start taking risks for your own sake, especially if you know that is the right way to go.

If you think that you already have it all figured out, I would love to extend my heartiest congratulations to you. But I am also sorry to say that you will have an extremely mundane and stagnant life. You will have a life full of restrictions, and needless to say, the rest of your life will be also suffocating.

A life filled with fluctuations is what makes things interesting and keeps you going.

And, if you are not doing what you enjoy, failure will be particularly painful due to the time invested without getting anything in return. Failure while doing what you love despite having all odds stacked against you is the reward itself.

You would never regret the process even though you may not get what you want in the end. Bittersweet, painful sometimes, but worth everything.