174 Get Back Up

"If you believe you're finished, you'll never write your own ending." - Lewis Howes If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at lewishowes.com/174. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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  This is episode number 174, Five Minute Fridays, and you've got to get back up. Confucius said, "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." I'm not interested in the story of the person who has never fallen down in their life. That's a myth, not a true story. Nelson Mandela said, "Do not judge me by my successes. Judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again." I'm interested in the story of the person who gets back up.

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  In 1978, at age 28, Diana Nyad first attempted to swim from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida. She had covered about 76 miles, but not in a straight line, when Team Doctors pulled her out of the water and ended her first attempt after 42 hours. On July 10th, 2010, at the age of 60, she began open water training for a 60-hour, 103-mile swim from Cuba to Florida, a task she had failed to finish 30 years previously. When asked her motivation, she replied, "Because I'd like to prove to the other 60-year-olds that it is never too late to start your dreams." Much of her adult life, Nyad was angry.

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  Fueled by her anger, she swam with a vengeance because her high school coach had repeatedly sexually assaulted her through her teen years. In 2013, on her fifth attempt, in the pitch-black night, stung by jellyfish, choking on saltwater, singing to herself, hallucinating, Diana Nyad just kept on swimming. And that's how she finally achieved her lifetime goal as an athlete, an extreme 100-mile swim from Cuba to Florida at age 64.

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  When Jim Carrey was 14 years old, his father lost his job and his family hit rough times. They moved into a Volkswagen van on a relative's lawn and the young aspiring comedian took an eight hours per day factory job after school to help make ends meet. At age 15, Carrey performed his comedy routine onstage for the very first time in a suit that his mom made him, and he totally bombed, but he was never defeated. The next year, at 16, he quit school to focus on comedy full-time. He moved to LA shortly after where he would park on Mulholland Drive every night and visualize his success.

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  One of these nights, he wrote himself a check for $10 million for "acting services rendered", which he dated for Thanksgiving 1995. And just before that date, he hit his payday with Dumb and Dumber. He put the faded check, which he'd kept in his wallet the whole time, in his father's casket. Nothing could stop these people from reaching their dreams because they forged ahead even when their lives depended on it, even when they were running from a haunting past, even when they lost parts of themselves or other people who were irreplaceable. They got back up and kept going and didn't stop until they reached their destination.

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  If you stop in the middle, you'll never reach your goal. If you fall and stay down, you'll never know the joy of reaching the top. If you believe that you are finished, you'll never write your own ending. J.K. Rowling said it best, "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you fail by default." So no matter how many times you stumble, always, always get back up.

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  You