Dr. John A. King argues that failure isn't backward movement but forward progress if you learn from it. He uses boxing as a metaphor: keep your chin down and keep punching. Everyone stumbles. What matters is that you don't stop.
I came to write the last chapter in this book, and I thought instead I'd just have a chat. I can look at my life now, and in many ways people would say that I'm successful. I'm married after 25 years. I've got great kids. I'm married. I'm living a dream in so many ways. I don't know if there's a major thing I haven't had a chance to do. But to say it's been easy would be a downright lie. To say it hasn't had its obstacles, to say that I haven't failed in the classic sense, to say that I haven't had things I've had to overcome in business, publicly, personally, would just not be true. I suppose I got to a point where people were saying, you know, you take one step forward and two steps back, and I got sick of hearing that. I got sick of saying that over my own life and thinking about my own life in that way. I decided that what I would do is I'd never take another step back. That if I came to a point of failure, I was going to fall forward. I'm 6 foot. I put my arms out, maybe I make a good 7 and a half or 8 foot. I decided that if I was going to fail, I was going to fall forward. And if I land on my face and I crawl up to my hands, then I'm 7 foot further along than I was when I started. So I haven't gone backwards. I think the key to living from the inside out, the key to overcoming adversity, is falling forward. Whatever you're going through, someone else has. Wherever you're heading, someone else has been. Whatever you're facing, someone else has already overcome. You don't have to go this thing alone, and you don't have to think that failure disqualifies you. What disqualifies you is not getting up and going one more time. My boxing coach told me years ago that when you're really in a corner and you're up against it and you're tired, and if you've ever fought, You get like that. You get into that last round where you've warred. Doesn't matter how long it's for, for 3, 5, or 15 rounds. You've just gone to war with someone. You're tired, you're mentally spent, emotionally spent, physically spent. And he said, when you get to that point, all you've got to do is tuck your chin and throw punches. And as long as you're active, as long as you're moving, as long as your head's down, they can't get you. It's the same in life, friend. Tuck your chin and throw punches. Fall forward. Don't give up. If you, if you give up— giving up is only hard the first time. After that, it becomes ever so easy. You come to expect it of yourself. Others come to expect it of you. Don't give up. The thing I love most about what I have the privilege of doing is helping facilitate the dreams of others. If you want help, if you need guidance, I've got a library of books that I've read or written. I can point you in the right direction. If you want to have a chat, drop an email, have a coffee sometime, just reach out. You're not alone. Don't do this thing on your own. Fall forward. Just don't give up. It's not worth it in the long term. All you remember is the day that you made the decision to stop falling forward. You will never remember the reasons why. You'll never remember the feelings of fatigue. You'll never remember those things. All you'll do is remember that you made a decision to stop trying. Don't stop trying. Fall forward. It's the best thing you can do. If you're going to fail, fail magnificently.
