Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Last November, we took a trip to Houston to see the NASA control center. They sold these bracelets there.

I bought myself one because I had just heard the story about Apollo 13 again.

After four days of nail-biting tension, the Apollo 13 command module Odyssey splashed down into the Pacific Ocean. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert had safely returned to Earth despite an explosion that took out much of their service module during their aborted trip to the Moon.

And although he never actually said the words back then, it was the Kranz character in the Ron Howard movie “Apollo 13,” who said aloud what everyone at NASA believed during those tough days in 1970: “Failure is not an option.”

Every time my workout gets a little hard or I’m tempted to eat when I don’t really feel hungry, I look at this bracelet. Failure is NOT an option. Keep on running. Walk away from that dessert. Get enough sleep and drink another glass of water.