Fall Forward: The Positive Mindset of Stumbling Ahead
It’s dark out there. The temptation is to fall back. But there’s a better way to get through life.
There are so many dark associations with the term fall back. Failing military campaigns fall back. We’re told we need a plan to fall back on when our dreams fail. When you run out of real food or can’t afford a good meal, you might fall back on Spam or Top Ramen. And now, with summer dead and gone and the days waning miserably shorter and colder, whole populations are told to fall back as part of a misguided time-change scheme that invites much darkness into the evening.
Falling back is all about pessimism and failure. And sure, amid all the wars and social strife and political insanity splintering family and friends, it’s natural to fall back, to retreat, to shrink into a protective black hole of non-combative solitude, to cuddle the darkness that swallows the light.
From that dark seed a bright idea sprouted in my mind. I don’t want to fall back anymore. I want to fall forward.
When the term came to me, I rolled it around on my tongue a little, and got more and more excited about it. I said to my wife:
“I’ve invented a new term, and I kinda like it.”
“Okaaaay,” she said, her voice…
