Fall Seven Times, Stand Up Eight: The Mindset That Rebuilt My Life

There’s an old Japanese proverb that says:
“Fall seven times, stand up eight.”
It sounds simple. Almost too simple.
But sometimes the simplest truths are the ones we fight the hardest to accept.

Most people hear that quote and picture grit, toughness, the unstoppable underdog who keeps getting back up. But I’ve learned firsthand that standing back up is not automatic.
It’s not instinct.
It’s not a reflex.
It’s a choice.

And for a long time, I didn’t understand that either.

When Life Knocks You Flat

When I first learned that my kidneys were failing, it felt like the ground vanished beneath me. One moment I was just Mark — a husband, a dad, a guy trying to get his life together. The next, I was a patient. A statistic. Another story in the transplant waiting list.

That wasn’t the first fall and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Fear knocked me down.
Uncertainty knocked me down.
The waiting and not knowing knocked me down… harder than anything else could.

And here’s the thing people don’t talk about enough:

When you're on the floor, it’s frighteningly easy to stay there.

Because when life beats you up, your mind starts whispering things like:

• “This is too much.”

• “You’re not strong enough.”

• “Why even try?”

• “People like you don’t come back from this.”

Those thoughts feel real. They feel heavy. They feel like truth.

But they’re not truth.
They’re the echo of a mindset that hasn’t yet learned its own power.

Standing Up Is a Choice — But Only If You Know You Have One

When people say “just get back up,” they forget one important piece:
Many people don’t realize they can.

They fall victim to circumstances because no one ever taught them that resilience is a muscle, not a personality trait. No one told them that falling isn’t failure. Staying down is.

Before my transplant, before I ever ran a marathon, before I wrote The Overcomer’s Journey, I had to confront this truth in a brutally honest way:

I was waiting for someone else to save me. Someone else to fix it. Someone else to change my story. But that’s not how life works.

When I finally understood that standing back up was my responsibility and my decision, everything shifted. Not instantly but powerfully.

The Comeback Is the Choice

My transplant was a miracle — one I’ll be forever grateful for.
But my comeback? My transformation? That wasn’t a miracle.

That was a decision.

A decision to stand up when it was easier to stay down.
A decision to train when my body felt fragile.
A decision to run a marathon when the world said, “slow down.”
A decision to rewrite the story that circumstance tried to hand me.

People say, “You defied the odds.”
But the truth is, I chose to stop letting the odds define me.

That’s what “stand up eight” really means. Not that you’re unbreakable… but that you’re unwilling to stay broken.

Most People Don’t Need Motivation — They Need Permission

And that’s why Maselli Mindset exists. Not to preach at you.
Not to tell you how to live your life.
But to remind you of something you may have forgotten:

You are stronger than you believe.
You are more capable than you’ve ever been told.
And the power to rise again and again already lives inside you.

Sometimes you just need someone to shine a light on it.

That’s why I wrote The Overcomer’s Journey.
Not as a book about my comeback, but as a blueprint for yours.

Because the truth is this:

We all fall.
We all break.
We all hit the floor at some point in our lives.

But your story is not written in the falling.
It’s written in the rising.

You Become Stronger Every Time You Stand

Every comeback builds muscle.
Every rise builds identity.
Every choice to stand up reinforces the truth:

You are becoming the strongest version of yourself not despite the falls, but because of them.

So, if you're in a season where you feel knocked down… If life has hit you harder than you expected… If you're staring at the ceiling wondering how you got here…

Remember the proverb:
Fall seven times, stand up eight.
And remember what it means:

You don’t need a perfect mindset.
You don’t need to feel ready.
You don’t need certainty.

You just need the courage to rise one more time.

That’s how Overcomers are made.
That’s how Maselli Mindset was born.
And that’s how your next chapter begins.