No Dream Is Too High

• CHAPTER SEVEN • FAILURE IS ALWAYS AN OPTION.

People who say “Failure is not an option” are usually trying to motivate others to excellence, and that is noble. But the truth is, if you are afraid to fail, you will probably not accomplish much in life. Imagine if failure were not an option for the space program. We’d have never gotten off the ground.

Years after I had walked on the Moon, my son Andy examined the launch records of the Atlas rocket system, used in four Mercury launches, including Friendship 7, the spacecraft in which John Glenn became the first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth three times. When Andy studied the history of the Atlas rockets, the precursor to the Saturn rockets used for the Apollo program, he was shocked to discover that they had experienced a 40 percent failure rate. Andy quips that our first astronauts may have had enormous courage, but their sense of judgment must have been seriously impaired! For Apollo 11, we had estimated a 60 percent chance of landing successfully on the Moon and a 95 percent chance of returning home safely. I especially liked that last part!

President Richard Nixon possessed great confidence in the mission of Apollo 11, but he was also a realist. He knew it was possible for us to fail in our attempt to land on the Moon and return home. In a little known document, the president prepared a “what if?” speech in case Neil and I didn’t make it. His words are honoring though sobering:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

The president was wise to consider the possibilities and would have been remiss had he not. All these years later, when I read President Nixon’s prepared but undelivered speech, written for him by presidential speechwriter and noted journalist William Safire, it reminds me that failure is always an option.

IF YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT, something noble, something that perhaps has never been done before, you must be willing to fail. And don’t be surprised or devastated when you do. It is not the end of the world, and untold numbers of people have experienced major failures and have come back from them, not only as more successful, but also as better, stronger people.

I failed miserably during one of my first experiments on the Moon. With Neil already on the lunar surface, I made my way out of the Eagle’s hatch and began carefully descending the ladder, stepping slowly until I became more accustomed to how the heavy life-support backpack was going to affect my sense of balance in an environment with only one-sixth the gravitational pull of Earth’s. When I reached the last rung on the ladder, I jumped down to the Eagle’s footpad, solidly planted on the surface.

According to our flight plan’s checklist, I was supposed to jump back up again to the bottom rung, as an experiment from which I could learn how much energy I needed to expend after Neil and I returned from exploring the Moon’s surface. Because it had never been done before, we wanted to make sure that we could comfortably negotiate that first step after our extravehicular activity.

Neil had easily made the jump from the lunar module’s pad back to the first step, a leap I had watched him make as I peered out the window before going down the ladder myself. It didn’t look too hard.

But when I tried to jump back to the first rung, I underestimated the gravitational pull of the Moon, didn’t jump high enough, and missed the step by about an inch. My shins skidded against the step and scraped the bottom of the rung, smearing Moon dust on my space suit just below my knees. The dust was apparently a residual effect, left over from the bottom of Neil’s boots on the ladder.

So my first experiment on the Moon was a failure. How embarrassing! I thought.

My botched jump shook my confidence a bit. Maybe moving around on the Moon would be more difficult than I’d anticipated. I stood on the LM’s footpad for a few moments to regain my composure, and that’s when I decided to test the urine-collection device.

I’ll put a little more oomph in it, I thought to myself before jumping up again, and this time I easily ascended to the bottom rung. I was back to where I started a few seconds earlier but now with greatly improved self-confidence and a much lighter bladder. I dropped back down to the footpad and stepped out to where only one human being had ever gone before me, and that only a short time earlier—I stepped onto the surface of the Moon.

Over the years of my life, I’ve been quite open about the failures I’ve endured. I find that many people can relate more to my mistakes than they can to my successes. In truth, they both go hand in hand; my failures have led to my successes, and some of my greatest achievements have set me up for my worst falls. But I’ve learned and I’ve grown from both kinds of experiences.

Some people don’t like to admit that they have failed or that they have not yet achieved their goals or lived up to their own expectations. But failure is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign that you are alive and growing.

Get out of your comfort zone and be willing to take some risks as you work on new tasks. Some individuals have an aversion to risks, but it is not foolish to accept a level of risk, as long as the magnitude and worthiness of the goal you are seeking to achieve is commensurate with your risk. As your comfort zone expands, seek out even greater challenges. It is often said, and it really is true: You can do almost anything if you put your mind to it.

KEEP IN MIND THAT progress is not always linear. It takes constant course correcting and often a lot of zigzagging. Unfortunate things happen, accidents occur, and setbacks are usually painful, but that does not mean we quit.

My two biggest regrets both involve matters that I wish I would have spoken up about more vociferously: a space walk and the space shuttle.

On Gemini 9, NASA had hoped to conduct an experiment using an untethered jet pack during a space walk. I really wanted to do that! Imagine floating around in space and navigating under your own power as you orbit the Earth at 17,000 miles an hour.

I’m not a big movie buff, although I enjoy movies when I have time to watch them. Of course, I enjoy science fiction and I especially love movies about space, even though some of the older movies get so many details wrong. But they were imaginative in their time, and helped inspire us to reach for the stars.

One of my early favorites was 2001: A Space Odyssey, a movie adapted from a story written by sci-fi master Arthur C. Clarke that came out in 1968, when I was training for the Apollo program. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I was really tired the evening I attended the premiere and I fell asleep during the movie, despite Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant production and amazing special effects. But it is still one of my favorites!

More recently, I really enjoyed Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Although the movie had some errors (my friend Neil deGrasse Tyson enjoys pointing them out) and bent the laws of physics during the free-falling interaction between the characters, it came close to depicting the reality and awkwardness of moving around in zero gravity. As someone who has actually “walked” in space, I cringed while watching emergencies on the screen that I had hoped would never happen. But for the person who has never experienced space travel, the movie’s portrayals are thrilling because it graphically shows the hazards and the dangers of space walks if things go wrong. When I came out of the movie theater, I said to myself and to others, “Sandra Bullock deserves an Oscar.”

Unfortunately, during Gemini 12, NASA considered the risks too great for me to do the Clooney-type space walk. I had trained underwater to get comfortable with neutral buoyancy, so I felt confident that I could carry out the difficult procedures required to be able to “free-maneuver” with only a jet pack outside the spacecraft.

But NASA greatly wanted to avoid any failures on the final Gemini mission, so they canceled the experiment. I was extremely disappointed when I received the news, so I objected and tried to convince my superiors that we could accomplish the jet pack space walk. They listened, but were entrenched in their position. No jet pack for me.

I did the space walk during Gemini 12, but I didn’t have a jet pack, and I remained tethered to the Gemini 12 spacecraft. Certainly, I was thrilled to have experienced the sensational space walk outside the capsule. Please don’t misunderstand: I’m grateful for all my experiences in space, but I will always regret not speaking up more strongly, and possibly having the opportunity to operate detached from the spacecraft, using the jet pack. Because we didn’t attempt to spacewalk with the jet pack, we lost valuable time in which the technology for maneuvering in space could have progressed much more rapidly. On the other hand, I knew that if NASA did not deem the experiment safe and something went wrong, I might still be floating around somewhere in space, so I resigned myself to being content. Later, during the space shuttle and space station missions, astronauts were able to maneuver on their own using the jet packs. Lucky dogs!

My second regret is much more serious. I regret that I didn’t warn NASA more emphatically about the problems I saw with the space shuttle.

Shortly after I returned to Earth, after Apollo 11, I attended a meeting in Huntsville, Alabama, to view new spacecraft designs and to learn about a new space program along with a number of NASA officials, aerospace engineers, and rocket manufacturers. This program was intended to be NASA’s next big step, after Apollo.

While there, I was somewhat surprised to learn that our next foray into space would include an orbiter with wings and with wheels that could land on a runway, as well as a booster, also with wings and wheels to land on a runway. The program had generated great interest. At the meeting, at least seven aerospace manufacturers touted their rockets and boosters on which they were already working. They had models built in 1970 regarding the seven configurations and stages of the program to follow Apollo.

Today, we would be delighted to have a fully reusable orbiter to take the crew only, a booster to get them there, and then a return to Earth for both of them. We’d love to have that.

Why don’t we have that? Because of a grave design flaw.

When I studied the models, I observed that the boosters in the models had windows. That was a surprise to me. After all, why would you want windows in a booster with nobody in it?

I was informed that a crew of two astronauts would travel inside the booster to the space station, and then return in the booster to land back on Earth.

I worried about the crew in the booster during launch and said so. I thought it was unwise because of the expense, but even more so because of the danger to the astronauts.

During a launch, if something goes wrong, the top concern is for the safety of the astronauts in the orbiter. Generally, the lower stages of a launch can be destroyed relatively easily, simply by triggering the “Destruct” button. But that step could not be taken safely with a crew sitting atop the rocket in a booster.

I didn’t make a big deal about it at the meeting in Huntsville, but I spoke candidly about my concerns when I returned to the Manned Space Center in Houston. I should have spoken more strongly and been more emphatic. Perhaps if I had objected in front of the aerospace companies that had done the studies about manned boosters versus unmanned boosters, I could have made a case for the safety of the astronauts.

The NASA people who would be sitting in the control center during ignition and liftoff had been in the Huntsville meeting, so it wasn’t really my responsibility to point out something wrong with the booster—namely, having people in it!

But had I expressed my opinion in stronger terms, maybe someone would have paid more attention. Unfortunately, we were still trying to stay ahead of the Russians, so there was undue haste in rushing the space shuttle construction process. The haste in putting together the reusable shuttle that had crew and cargo together exacerbated the dangerous situation. They didn’t have room for the fuel, so they put the fuel in a separate tank and then had to boost it with solid rockets, one of which failed and caused the Challenger accident. The same configuration contributed to the ice that broke off and hit the wing on the Columbia, causing another tragic accident.

I had expressed my concerns on these issues with NASA many months before the Challenger and Columbia tragedies, but NASA gave me the impression that they weren’t interested in my ideas for improving the system, so I let it drop.

I was living in California on February 1, 2003, when the Columbia space shuttle was scheduled to return from the International Space Station. I had penciled onto my handwritten calendar (remember those?) that the Columbia was to land at the Kennedy Space Center at 9 a.m. (EST). As I watched the return coverage on television, I noticed that the radio transmissions from the shuttle suddenly fell silent. That was highly unusual. Ordinarily, there are almost continuous communications back and forth between the ground and the returning spacecraft. Instinctively, I knew that was bad news. Within minutes, all the major television networks broadcast what I feared: The Columbia had blown apart.

Actually, the catastrophe was much worse than a normal plane crash. Apparently, the shuttle had been damaged shortly after launch when a piece of foam insulation broke off from the main propellant tank, striking the left wing and damaging Columbia’s thermal insulation system, which protects it from temperatures of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit generated during reentry. Consequently, almost immediately after the Columbia reentered Earth’s atmosphere, the shuttle began to break apart and disintegrate as it streaked above Texas, spreading bits and pieces of debris across Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. All seven crew members died in the catastrophe.

I was deeply grieved by the shuttle accidents. I’ve often wondered if I could have made a difference had I voiced my concerns over certain elements of the program. Could I have saved the lives of our astronauts had I spoken up in stronger terms? I was confident in my positions; I felt strongly that I was right, but I didn’t want to rock the boat. So I went with the flow, gave in to the consensus of opinion, shut my mouth—well, as much as I could—and remained politically correct. Following the shuttle accidents, I made a promise to myself that I would never make that sort of mistake again. If I feel strongly about a matter—especially one that could make the difference between life and death—I am going to speak up, loudly and often.

AFTER I SPENT SOME TIME AS commander at the test pilot school in California, I decided to get back to what I loved—thinking about and designing mission plans that would help NASA recover after the two shuttle accidents. I felt strongly that instead of simply flying missions to the International Space Station, we should continue exploration programs.

As devastating as the space shuttle accidents were, as a nation and as individuals, we had to get back on our feet and begin moving forward again. Eventually, we finished the space station, eliminated the orbiter, and moved to dependence on others to let us hitch a ride up to the orbiting lab that many dedicated American engineers had created and that millions of American tax dollars had financed. Although exploration has continued, our progress has slowed significantly, but I have hope that with a new generation of space enthusiasts coming along, we will soon be going where no one has ever gone before, and we will have learned from our tragic past failures.

Have you ever seen an eagle react when a storm comes up? To escape the tumult, an eagle will purposely fly higher until it is above the turbulence. For an eagle, storms, setbacks, or failures are simply opportunities to go to a higher level. In the same way, you cannot allow the storms of life to hold you down or cause you to live in fear. Usually, fear—especially fear of failure—is the greatest enemy keeping you from getting where you want to go. Fear paralyzes in many ways, but especially if it keeps you from responding wisely and intelligently to challenges. The only way to overcome your fears is to face them head-on.

Just because you face your fears, however, doesn’t mean you won’t mess up. I discovered that the hard way when I received an invitation from a friend to speak at a gala fundraiser for an animal rights and rescue group in London. I fretted about it and whined to Christina that I really didn’t have a message for such a group.

“Of course, you do,” Christina said. “Just tell them about how much your family has always enjoyed animals.”

“Okay, I can do that.” I accepted the invitation.

As background to this story, you need to know that my life has been full of all kinds of interactions with animals. From its inception, NASA was known for rigorous training of its astronauts, but beginning with the Gemini program, the preparation program became more extensive. Not only did we have to study aerodynamics, physics, geology, astronomy, and navigation, and practice exercises designed to simulate weightlessness, but we prepared as much as we could for every possible scenario we might encounter in space and upon landing. We spent long hours practicing for emergencies that we hoped would never happen, but we needed to know what to do should such hazards or even catastrophes occur. Some of the training was somber, some was extremely difficult, and some was actually fun!

We did survival training in the hot Nevada desert, as well as in the sweltering rain forest jungles of Panama and in parts of South America, in case our reentry spacecraft landed off course when we returned to Earth. We learned how to escape a sinking space capsule in case we encountered a problem after splashdown, how to use our parachutes as clothing, as well as how to build makeshift shelters under the worst conditions and to live off the land or sea.

I discovered that I could stay alive in the jungle by catching an iguana and eating small chunks of its claws each day, while keeping the iguana alive and wrapped around my neck. I thought this was a rather ingenious way of maintaining my food supply in the rain forest. Iguana and boa constrictor—sometimes cooked, sometimes not—were actually quite tasty. If you are thinking of the “survivor” shows on television, multiply that exponentially and you will come close to understanding astronaut survival training.

At the same time, my family and I have always loved animals of every kind. My oldest son, Mike, was an avid animal lover, too, and my daughter Jan owned an Appaloosa horse. My younger son, Andy, never saw a dog that he didn’t want to bring home. When my family and I moved to a new home after I had returned from the Moon, we purposely purchased property where we could have a variety of animals. Dogs, cats, goats, “rolling” trained pigeons, sheep, chickens, and of course, Jan’s horse, all roamed freely around our backyard. We had a barn with two stalls—one for the horse and one for the chickens. We once even had a monkey that we had rescued and brought home with us.

We should have had a sign in our yard that read, “Animals ‘R’ Us.” I love animals!

Unfortunately, during the gala in London, I got so swept up in the moment that I forgot who I was addressing. When I launched into a story about staying alive by nibbling pieces of an iguana, to say they were not impressed would be a gross understatement. More precisely, they were outraged! They didn’t care that I had been an animal lover all my life, or that I had walked on the Moon, or anything else. They were ready to have my hide!

I apologized as best I could and then made a hasty exit. It was not my finest hour. It was the last time that group invited me to their parties, but I’ve certainly been invited to many a gala since. Hey, we’re all human, and we all make mistakes. When you do, don’t make a big deal about it. Apologize, do whatever you can to make it right, and keep moving on.

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN SMART. God blessed me with a good mind and the ability to understand certain things that others have trouble comprehending. But there is a big difference between being smart and being a smart-ass. For most of my life, I’ve been both.

As any of my family members or my fellow astronauts will tell you, I’ve always had a healthy dose of self-esteem and an appreciation of my abilities. I tend to say whatever I’m thinking, with few filters, and I’m not bashful about what I believe and don’t believe. Moreover, I don’t have much patience with incompetence or mental laziness.

These traits have served me well over the years. But there have been times—I know this is hard for some people to believe—when I might have come across as arrogant, stubborn, inflexibly opinionated, and totally devoid of tact.

Someone asked me recently, “Buzz, have you ever said the words, ‘I was wrong’?”

“No,” I answered without a moment of hesitation. But I might have been wrong about that.

Still, people who know me recognize that I have unusual talents, and I know it, too. The danger, of course, is that my greatest strengths could also reveal my most serious flaws, and sometimes I didn’t realize that.

During Gemini 9, Jim Lovell and I were the backup crew, so we were in Mission Control during the launch. Once it appeared that everything was going well and the crew was on their way, Jim and I were no long needed, so I left. On the way home, I stopped off to have a drink, which led to several drinks. Meanwhile, little did I know that Gemini 9 had developed a problem in the “Angry Alligator,” a crucial part of the vehicle’s docking mechanism necessary for it to complete its mission.

When I heard that the crew was in trouble, I hurried back to Mission Control. I walked into the control room and found everyone anxious and on edge, trying desperately to come up with a solution.

I knew there were wire cutters on board Gemini 9, so I made a suggestion that one of the astronauts do a space walk outside the spacecraft and use the wire cutters to cut the cables to release the Angry Alligator and get it to unlock. I knew that time was of the essence and that the system worked on hydraulics, so if the cable could be released, it might be a quick solution. Unfortunately, perhaps because of my semi-inebriated condition, my suggestion didn’t make much sense to my superiors.

When the problem was finally solved, Deke Slayton, one of the original NASA astronauts and now director of flight crew operations, expressed his fury with me. “Buzz, your irresponsible suggestion really irritated me,” Deke said.

Bob Gilruth, the program director, echoed Deke’s sentiments. “I’m thinking of taking you off the program,” Bob railed. Bob was not merely threatening to kick me off the Gemini program; he was talking about kicking me completely out of the space program. This was a big deal and could have derailed my entire career and changed the course of my life.

Deke and Bob thought that I was being reckless in regard to the lives of my fellow astronauts. I really wasn’t. I was trying to be helpful. I was searching my mind for a quick solution, and the option I presented made perfectly good sense to me.

Fortunately, Neil Armstrong stood up for me and suggested that I was merely trying to think outside the box to get the Alligator to unlock, and my superiors forgave me … after I apologized about a million times.

Sometimes, you have to be big enough to admit when you are wrong—even if you really aren’t. What difference does it make who is right or wrong if you allow your conflict to drive a wedge between you and your peers, or you and your loved ones?

I’M FREQUENTLY ASKED, “Buzz, what was the scariest thing you experienced in space?” I have a ready answer, because it reminds me of another mistake I made that could have been costly.

After blasting off the Moon, our next challenge was to successfully rendezvous the Eagle with Mike Collins and the Columbia command module that we hoped would return us to Earth. Our rendezvous plan was not a straight shot off the lunar surface to intersect the Columbia. Instead, Neil and I orbited the Moon for a couple of hours, and during our second orbit of the Moon, the Columbia came into sight. We had practiced docking one spacecraft to another in simulations, and U.S. astronauts had successfully performed the procedure as early as the Gemini program, so we had a well-established plan.

But as Neil and I approached the Columbia to initiate the connecting/docking procedures, although I knew our flight checklist said one thing, I had a spur-of-the-moment idea to dock in a slightly different manner, in a way that I thought might make docking the two spacecraft much easier. Rather than guiding the Eagle into a straight-ahead approach with the Columbia, I suggested to Neil that we use a rolling-and-pitching approach different from the direct horizontal line we had anticipated and practiced.

Neil agreed, and nobody at Mission Control raised any objections, so we initiated the unrehearsed procedures. As it turned out, the rolling-and-pitching approach was not a good thing to do, because it caused the platform to become locked, and we were not able to use the Eagle’s primary thrusters, the main means of guidance, to control the spacecraft through its final few feet to dock with the Columbia.

Can you imagine that? After successfully landing on the Moon and spending a few hours exploring its surface, then successfully launching off the Moon and rendezvousing with our ride home, we nearly blew the whole deal because of my last-minute idea to break away from tried-and-tested procedures.

I had suggested to my commander that we do things differently, and that was my mistake. It was his mistake to assume that I knew what I was talking about! So we both made mistakes—brought about by me!

We recovered using the “abort guidance” system to bring the Eagle into proper alignment for docking with the Columbia.

Neither Neil nor I said anything about our potentially mission-destroying goof, although I’m sure the rendezvous experts at Mission Control in Houston knew what had happened. They were probably going nuts as they watched their computer screens. They graciously didn’t squeal on us. Maybe they thought, Well, Buzz is Dr. Rendezvous. Surely, he knows what he is doing.

Once we corrected our docking plans, the rendezvous occurred just as I had imagined it years earlier when I had developed my theories and techniques for manned spacecraft rendezvous. It was picture-perfect. Four hours after Neil and I left the lunar surface, I heard one of the sweetest sounds I’d ever heard—the latches locking shut as Mike threw the switches inside the command module to secure the Eagle to the Columbia. The three of us were together again, and soon we’d be on our way home.

You may not always be right; you may not always win, but you won’t know if you don’t try, and you won’t have a chance to win if you don’t take the shot. Make a decision; if it is wrong, correct it if possible, learn from it, and move on. But whatever you do, don’t allow the fear of failure to paralyze you.

Yes, failure is always an option. You may fail at times; you may fall flat on your face. But get back up, brush off the dust, and keep pushing the boundaries; keep pushing yourself to go outside your own comfort zone. Don’t allow mistakes, disappointment, rejection, or failure to define you. Despite your flaws, flub-ups, or failures, don’t let “disappointment” or “rejection” be the final words.

When I was a high school student, I aspired to become a Rhodes scholar and to attend Oxford University in England. To me, that was the epitome of academic achievement. I applied twice but wasn’t accepted as a Rhodes scholar, so I went on to West Point and later to MIT instead, where I received my master’s degree and continued with my doctoral studies. I completed my doctoral thesis on the subject of “space rendezvous.” That failure to become a Rhodes scholar made all the difference in the world for me and for a lot of other people.

Recently, I was in England and had the opportunity to visit Oxford. I smiled as I thought of myself as a jolly old English academic. My life, and perhaps America’s space program, may have been dramatically different had I not failed to become a Rhodes scholar.

Disappointments come at every age and at every level of success. For instance, I was disappointed after the successful mission of Apollo 11, when I was not appointed as commandant of the Air Force Academy in Colorado. That was a position in which I felt I could thrive.

Shortly after Neil, Mike, and I completed a world tour following Apollo 11, we met with President Richard Nixon at the White House for a private dinner. The president asked each of us what we’d like to do in the future. “I know you’ve been talking with Secretary Rogers,” he said, looking at Mike, “about a position with the State Department.”

“Yes, sir,” Mike agreed. “I’m looking forward to that.”

I was a bit surprised when Neil answered the president’s query about his future plans. “I’d like to stay with NASA for a while,” Neil said, “and maybe work in the aeronautics department.” I was somewhat surprised that the first man ever to walk on another celestial body did not want to work in the space program, but wanted to return to aviation. I didn’t fault him for that. Neil had always loved being a test pilot.

When the president turned to me and asked about my future plans, I didn’t know what to tell him. I was thinking about returning to the Air Force. As an astronaut who had walked on the Moon, I could see myself as a motivator and a role model for young airmen at the Air Force Academy, and that position appealed to me. But for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to suggest it to President Nixon. I guess I should have, because by the time I asked to be released from NASA to return to the Air Force in June 1971, the position of commandant of the Air Force Academy was already filled by the son of the legendary Air Force general Hoyt Vandenberg.

Instead, I was offered a position at Edwards Air Force Base in California, where I became commandant of the USAF Test Pilot School, a great job, but I cut my aeronautical teeth as a fighter pilot; I had never even been a test pilot.

Not surprisingly, I commanded the test pilots’ school for only nine months—admittedly, nine of the most stressful months of my life—before deciding to retire from the Air Force. I was only 42 years of age, with no real exciting job opportunities presenting themselves. But to me, the strain on my emotions and on all of my family relationships was no longer worth the struggle. I was not about to let “rejection” and “failure” be the final words of my life.

I’VE SINCE LEARNED THAT I MUST transform pain to power if I want to overcome setbacks. And sometimes that means I simply choose to ignore something that I don’t like. Even in the little things, the inconsequential or seemingly insignificant, I’ve learned to grin and bear it. For instance, for years, my wife made me the same Cobb salad every day, complete with veggies, boiled eggs, and fat-free mayonnaise. Unless we were going out to eat someplace, I knew what I could expect.

After my wife and I divorced, Christina carried on the tradition of making me a huge salad for lunch every day. Of course, she followed the example she had seen, including all the ingredients she had seen me eating for years, filling up the bowl with all sorts of vegetables, including carrots and celery sticks.

One day Christina came in as I was finishing up my salad, and I said to her, “You know, when I was a kid, I always hated celery.”

“Oh? And you like it now?”

“Naaah, I still hate it.”

“What?” Christina asked in surprise. “Where is it? Did you take it out of your salad?”

“No, I ate it.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because that was my West Point training. We were taught to eat everything on our plates and not complain about it.”

Sure, there are some things in life that are hard to swallow, but if you just gulp hard, you can get it down and keep on going. You have to believe there is some coconut ice cream—my favorite—out there somewhere, and that good things will be coming along soon!