I have friends who have skated by in life pretty smoothly. They seem to have had their ambitions sorted before they could walk.
I, however, have had a little bit of a different experience. I have experienced failure in some way or another, in everything I have ever tried. Now, don't get me wrong, this is an attempt to gain your pity. I am better from those failures.
For the longest time, I used the "nothing is ever handed to me" mentality to justify being miserable. The world consistently did me dirty, and I was mad about it. I was bitter and angry every time a friend got accepted to their top-choice college or got hired at the perfect job.
And then one day, it clicked: I could stay miserable and bitter for the rest the my life, or I could shake it off. Nowadays, I have adopted a new mentality. Nowadays, I live by the ever so popular sentiment, "everything happens for a reason." Maybe, I did not get that job. Maybe I'll never have a 4.0 or the nicest car. But every bump and failure is a test on the road to greatness. To paraphrase a Shakespeare quote from "Midsummer Night's Dream," "The course of love never did run smooth." The course of life seems to follow suit.
In the scheme of life, these bumps will be stories and these failures will be forgotten. Just take the hits as they come.