I have learned the hard way that you can't change your destination overnight, but you can change the direction in which you're headed.

There isn't a soul I know who hasn't made some bad choices in life. My list is long and illustrious.

I used to be the right weight for a guy 6'-8" tall. My problem is I'm only 5'-8". I'm just a foot too short. When it became apparent that I wasn't growing upward, only outward, I decided to have a bariatric by-pass to solve my food addiction.

I asked my doctor why this addiction existed, and he said simply: "bad genes." Bad what? Bad genetics. He said, "I've got the proof. I've had this surgery and my wife, who is also a surgeon, has had a bariatric by-pass. We both weighed close to 400 pounds before we had our surgery to correct our problem. We have two children at home. One is ten and the other is ten and one-half."

Naturally, I asked how that could be, and he explained that the older child was adopted. His biological kid weighed 310 and the adopted child weighed 70. Both ate off the same table at the same time. What was the difference? Genetics. "My biological child was doomed to be fat before he was born, and so were you."

Food isn't the only bad choice I've made in my life. I never met a cheeseburger I didn't like…true enough. But I'm also obsessed with winning at everything I do. Guess what? I've failed more often than I've succeeded in life.

The baseball player who is hitting .333 is among the highest paid in the profession, and yet he is failing two out of three times that he enters the batters box. The guy who averages .250 is failing slightly more often-- three out of four times that he goes to the plate. His income is only a fraction of his peer, and yet the difference (statistically speaking) between these two hitters is only one more hit in every twenty times at bat.

I've learned, the hard way, that failure is the process by which we succeed. The key is to get enough "at bats." If you don't go to the plate, you'll never get a hit.

In the terrific 2006 movie "We Are Marshall" Hall of Fame Coach Jack Lengyel played by Matthew McConaughey is challenged by his assistant coach Red Dawson (played by Matthew Fox) that the Marshall University was merely collecting "pity applause from the competition" as they attempted to field a team after losing 75 team members, coaches, officials, parents and boosters in the most devastating plane crash in college football history.

"It's not important that we win right now," said Coach Lengyel. "What's important that we put a team on the field… and one day we will win."

It is important that you get into the game if you expect to have a chance to win. Life is the same way. I lost the World Championship of Public Speaking in 1977 because I did something very stupid-- I went eight seconds over my allotted time limit and was disqualified.

I won't deny that I had a pity party. I was sitting on my pity-pot (my suit case) in the Toronto International Airport. I was having a great pity party, feeling sorry for myself, waiting for my flight to depart… when I noticed that my plane had taxied off without me. It was then that I realized that I wasn't going to win the championship that year.

I came back a year later and won it in Vancouver, British Columbia. My point is this: Sometimes you have to go through Toronto to get to Vancouver. Sometimes you have to experience defeat before you'll ever appreciate victory in life.

Don't be afraid to fail in life. Be afraid of not trying. You can't change your destination in life overnight, but you can change the direction. As my client Nike says, "Just do it!"