Right off the bat, let's put to rest some misconceptions about who should and who shouldn't be writing advice books. There's no point in getting advice from hopeless failures. A hopeless failure has experience with only one mode of living, the hopeless failure mode, and can only give advice of a negative variety: "Don't do what I did." "Don't do this." "Don't do that." And no matter what hopeless failures tell you, life is much more about deciding what to do than what not to do.

On the other hand, enormous successes have little to offer in the way of practical advice for ordinary people. Because of their enormous success they are so far removed from the struggles faced by the rest of us that their advice tends toward matters Olympian, of interest only to other mega-successful people. For example, you probably won't be interested in how to approach the crucial decisions about the layout of your private jet cabin. I can remember wasting a day and a half reading billionaire Paul Allen's Should the Seats Face Each Other, or All Face Forward? (The answer, if you care, is that they should all be swivel seats, which can be locked in place for takeoff or landing.)

No. The perfect person to write an advice book is me. Someone who is very successful and yet still flies commercial, albeit first class, separated from ordinary people by no more than a flimsy curtain. I know what it's like to struggle, or at least have some dim recollection. As a successful person, I have to make decisions every day that put practical advice, advice that I plan to pass on to you, into action. And yet I'm not so enormously successful that I don't have time to write, or at least dictate, this book.

Some readers might think that because I am so successful, I have never made a mistake. If you're one of those, stop reading right now, because, frankly, you're hopeless. Even the most successful people make mistakes, and some have even learned from their mistakes.

Most people, for example, would consider Microsoft founder Bill Gates successful. And I guess if you equate success with wealth, power, a stable and happy home life, and a fulfilling role in society as a philanthropist and a highly esteemed thinker, then, yes, I suppose Bill Gates is successful. But in any event, let's not argue about that here.

What most people don't realize is that Bill Gates has made lots of mistakes, many more than I have. One of Bill Gates's biggest mistakes was bundling his Microsoft Internet Explorer browser with his best-selling Windows software in a manner deemed anticompetitive and monopolistic by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson of the United States First District Circuit. But Gates learned from his mistake, and has promised to unbundle the software to the minimum extent necessary to reach the threshold of fair competitive practice as interpreted by the current, business-friendly Bush administration.

One of the many areas in which I have succeeded is as a public speaker. In any given year, I make literally hundreds of speeches to corporate groups, trade associations, and, my favorite, colleges and universities. Right now, in fact, I am on a plane writing this book during some "downtime" en route to Spokane, Washington, where I will be giving my standard speech, "Winners Aren't Born, They're Made" to the students of Gonzaga College.

But I wasn't always in such great demand as a speaker. Particularly after a series of disastrous commencement addresses I gave in the early eighties. These were mistakes. And I learned from them.

Take for example the first commencement address I ever gave. It was at Hartford State Technical College, where I was a last-minute replacement for Undersecretary of the Navy Warren Untemeyer, who had been delayed by an unexpected indictment. Funny story. The message my housekeeper passed along led me to believe I was speaking at Harvard, not Hartford State Technical College. By the time it was straightened out and I had arrived in Hartford from New York, via Cambridge, I was so tired, disappointed, and frankly, angry at the graduates, that I'm afraid I allowed my feelings to color my judgment on what sort of speech to give. I took a very hard line with that year's class from HSTC.

I began with a quote from Goethe, whose most famous work, The Sorrows of Young Werther, deals with the depression and eventual suicide of an obsessive university student. Here then is my first, and second-least successful, commencement address:

When I was first asked to speak at Hartford State Technical College, I jumped at the opportunity. Because, you see, I thought I had been asked to speak at Harvard, which would have been quite an honor. But instead I am here with you, the nation's future air conditioner repairmen. Let's try to make the best of it.

Goethe once said, "A useless life is an early death." In Goethe's terms, most of you are already dead. Because most of you will live useless lives. You will, you will, and you will. [Here I pointed for dramatic effect at several particularly useless-looking graduates and then at a man who I later learned was Dr. Jonas Salk, discoverer of the polio vaccine, who was there to receive an honorary degree and give a serious address to contrast with my supposedly humorous one.]

If Dr. Jonas Salk were here, he would tell you the key to living a useful life like his is to expect the unexpected. [And here I proceeded to tell several anecdotes about the discovery of the polio vaccine which Dr. Salk had intended to tell himself, thus expanding the scope of the disaster.]

But back to Goethe, and please remember that I prepared this speech for Harvard students, so it will probably be way over your heads.

As the booing began, I became hostile and openly combative and concluded my address, amid a flurry of catcalls and thrown objects, by giving the graduates and their families the finger.

Let's take a look at what I did wrong. First, there was my housekeeper, who was responsible for the entire debacle. She simply had to go. Second, when challenged by an unexpected situation (speaking at Hartford rather than Harvard), I had behaved irrationally instead of trying to adapt to the new environment as Dr. Salk would have done.

But did I learn from my mistakes? Yes and no, but mainly no. A year later I was asked to speak to the graduating class of Lewis and Clark University in Portland, Oregon, where I received an honorary doctorate along with Connie Chung and Wolfgang Puck. This time my strategy was to start my speech with a bit of extremely personal information that would get the audience on my side. See if you can tell what went wrong.

Friends, family members, distinguished faculty, graduating seniors, Connie and Wolfgang. Three weeks ago I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. [Wolfgang's gasp could be heard over the shocked silence of the crowd.] It is a lethal and particularly painful form of the disease. I was told I had at most six months to live. Some of you probably pity me. But don't pity me. See, I pity you. Because while I have been sentenced to death, you have received a far harsher judgment. You have been sentenced to life. Without parole. You have, and you have, and you have. [And here I did the pointing thing.]

Aside from repeating the pointing mistake, what did I do wrong? Should I have just given up making commencement addresses? Or could I learn from my mistakes? Maury Povich, Connie's husband, took me aside and, after recommending an oncologist who had recently appeared on his program, gave me the key. "Al," Maury began, "personally I loved your speech. But I think you may have lost the crowd by being so negative. Remember, this is a big day for them. They want to be inspired and uplifted. Not criticized and harangued."

As I listened to Wolfgang explain to a delighted audience how life was like a pizza, I realized that Maury had a point. Why, other than having terminal cancer, was I being so damned negative? It was because I was making the biggest mistake of all. Even before I had been diagnosed, I had always been something of a pessimist. I vowed that in my last six months, give or take, I would see the glass not as half empty, but as three-quarters full.

Putting my new outlook on life into practice, it was with a hopeful attitude that I went to get a second opinion from the Oncologist to the Stars, Dr. Howard Schickler. I was immediately rewarded with a diagnosis not of cancer, but of "not cancer." And this from the man who had made his name by spotting Steve McQueen's tumor when it was no larger than the period at the end of this sentenceb\\a149b

I was, frankly, giddy. My death sentence had been commuted! My cancer was gone, as if it had never been there, which, I suspect, it hadn't. And to this day, when I criticize or harass a college graduation class, I am careful to soften the blow with some words of hope and encouragement. And I always end my speeches with the same words of wisdom:

"Always get a second opinion!"

Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.

What was your biggest mistake today? Take ten minutes to write a short description of the mistake and a brief analysis of why you think you made it and how it can be avoided in the future. Once a month, show your "mistake reports" to the friend or mentor you have designated as your "mistake sponsor."