"It's never too late to be what you might have been."

Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone tastes failure. Everyone knows what it is like to see dreams and hopes crumble. The crumbling may occur in marriage, family, business, finances, school, sports or any other aspect of life in which we are involved.

However, the good news is: We can learn from our experiences, make necessary corrections, reload and begin again. Temporary failure only becomes total defeat when we continue to do the same things wrong. As we begin again, it is important that we replace old, defeating habits with new, winning habits.

Hundreds of times, when speaking to business groups and sports teams, I have made the statement, "More games are lost than won." This means that most failing businesses are not defeated by the competition. Rather, they are defeated because of weaknesses and destructive habits from within. Sports teams that limit their mental and physical mistakes give themselves an opportunity to win. Sports teams (and individual athletes) that continue to shoot themselves in the foot will continue to find themselves on the short end of the score.

Regardless of what anyone may say, whether or not a marriage is a success or failure depends on the two people married. Sure, there are outside influences. But in the end, the husband and the wife determine the outcome. The same holds true in any relationship. Regardless of outside influences, in the end it depends on the people involved in the relationship.

There are reasons why marriages fail, why parents and children can't communicate, why people struggle financially, why businesses can't seem to make it, why students perform poorly in school, why sports teams with positive potential don't produce. To correct the situations, we first need to spend quality time discovering the answer to "Why?"

On our own or with the help of others, we discover what needs to be corrected. Then, we inspect various ways in which the correction may be done. The good news here is: Unless a person has a wish to fail, or has no strong desire to succeed, or is extremely unintelligent, he or she can always find ways to change things.

Changing, however, is not always easy. Sometimes it is extremely difficult. That is why the outcome so often depends on how much we really want to "be what we might have been." Determination goes a long way in the success of beginning again.

To be determined is to confront adversity with confidence and persistence, without even considering the possibility of falling on your face and failing. It takes faith and determination to eliminate old habits. It takes fortitude to maintain newly acquired behaviors and not return to previous ones. But you can do it, as an individual, as a couple, as a family, as a business, as a sports team. You can do it, if you really have a burning desire to "be what you might have been."

And what if you fall short after beginning again? Well, I like the old saying: "Shoot for the moon. Even if you fall short, you will land among the stars." Trying and falling short is much more rewarding than spending the remainder of your life wondering what would have happened if you had really given your all to something in order to make it work.