Let’s review our lessons so far:
No. 1: Do your best.
No. 2: Start now.
No. 3: Choose friends wisely.
No. 4: Keep an open mind.
These are all good guidelines in the way that you approach college and the rest of your life. If you follow these lessons and those to come, you should be all right. Unfortunately, you will make mistakes. You are going to drop the ball, fail to do the obvious, choose the wrong friend and make decisions for the wrong reasons. You will not fail because you are a bad person, you will fail because you are human. It is just part of the deal. The thing that makes people great is that when they get knocked down, they keep getting up.
When you make a mistake in life, you have to accept that the past is somewhere you cannot go, and that means all you can do is go forward. The lessons you learn from mistakes are often more valuable to you in the long run than many of your successes.
You have to take what you have learned from your beat downs and improve in the future. This is very simple and very difficult.
You will run into a lot of people in the world that lost once and refuse to get in the game. You will meet people that blame their place in the world on everything other than themselves. They will live their present in the past, and always dream or talk about the way things should or could have been if things would have gone their way. The thing about life is that you have to keep looking for the passage that gets you where you want to go. Most of the winners in the world lost a whole lot more than they won; they just kept playing.
You will also see a lot of people that seem to cruise through life with little effort. Everything seems to go their way, and it all seems to fall directly into their lap. In the same way you are luckier than many of the people in the world, there will also be those that are luckier than you. It is a hard truth, but it is what it is. The important thing to remember is that, while the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence, you would be surprised how hard some of those people work just to make it look easy.
If you follow lesson No. 1 (do your best), then you have nothing to worry about. Your best is not determined by what others do. Your best comes from inside and a dedication to rising to the challenge of living life and doing the best you can. Once you realize that your best is all you can do, that gives you the freedom to quit worrying about others. Inherent in doing your best is getting up when you are knocked down. You can’t be counted out as long as you get up, wipe your gloves off and show the world you are ready to fight.
There is nothing easy about getting up. It is almost always easier in the short run to stay down and accept failure than to rise again. That means that the more you lay down, the easier it becomes. For many people, it is just the way they live. Never give up, and you will always have hope that you can overcome all of life’s challenges. You just have to try. Trying is the key ingredient to any successful life. That is true for everybody, especially those of us way up in the CHEAP SEATS!
Bill James is a co-founder of the James Law Firm with offices in Little Rock, Conway and Fayetteville, Ark. His primary area of practice is criminal defense. He can be contacted at Bill@JamesFirm.com.