
"Character consists not of the number of times one is knocked down, but of getting back up. The true measure of a person's character isn't how one lives with success, but how one reacts to the experience of failure and in particular what one does on the third and fourth knock-back?
On every occasion in my life when something uninviting and unhelpful has occurred, my mind has always gone to those wise words of my mother which she often spoke to me.
'There may be many people who are capable of putting you down, Billy, but only you can keep yourself down.'
As a young man in my early twenties, I had a good and very wise boxing instructor. While I could never really box with any great skill, I engaged in the sport at an amateur level in order to improve my balance, very much as I took up horse riding; having one leg a few inches shorter than the other as the result of a traffic accident. I often spun around too fast and lost my footing.
My instructor would constantly remind me as I entered the ring, 'Don't forget Bill, however many times he knocks you down, if you get up every time within ten seconds, he can never knock you out!'
I guess that my mother and my boxing trainer, though one be stranger to the other, must have certainly had a meeting of minds along the way!" William Forde: March 18th, 2014.