Those of you who know me, know I have never failed. Never. I will never fail. Why? Because I don’t stop trying, that’s why. Now I might stop doing something, but that’s different. I might decide it’s something I don’t want, it’s not for me, or it’s not building toward my goals. I raced cars for seven years. I couldn’t get the setup, it wasn’t for me, so I got out of that sport. I might stop doing something, but it’s not because I gave up or stopped trying.

And then, there’s always Plan B:

• Business. Anything can happen. No matter how much success you have, failure is always a possibility. You need to be totally 100 percent focused every single day as if it were your first day.
• Relationships. Relationships can fail, and when they do it’s hard—whether it’s in business or your personal life—because you feel sad, especially with divorce and there are children involved. Maybe some of the relationships wouldn’t have failed if we’d given them a little bit longer, or waited until we became a little bit more mature. A lot of relationships might have survived if you had more patience and allowed the other person to be who they really were. But it happens, and we can only do the best we can.
• Results. Failure results in negative feelings about ourselves. You have to work on getting past that by forgiving yourself and not letting it affect your future decisions.
• Unrealistic expectations. Sometimes people fail because it’s too hard. They give up and stop trying. Especially when you’re younger, your expectations don’t match reality or your limited experience. You’re impatient, and you think it’s going to be better somewhere else.
  

When things get too hard, it’s so easy to simply quit. But here’s the thing—if you quit, it just makes it that much easier to quit the next time. You need to try and try again! If you do, you’ll find that you’ll get stronger each time.

I sound so strong and assured, but it’s not that I’m not afraid. I’m afraid right here, doing this work with you. It’s out of my comfort zone, it’s not something I usually do, and I’m exposing myself much more than I normally would. That doesn’t bother me too much, but what I don’t want, what I’m afraid of, is to have a conversation with you, and say something that hurts your feelings, or doesn’t honor God. There’s no value in that. But all that doesn’t stop me. I’ll never stop because of fear, so I’m never going to fail.
—Mike Holt