Screwed up much in life?

Welcome to the club.

Sometimes the biggest mountains we have to move are the consequences of our own mistakes. We assume whatever we’ve done is so HUGE there’s no getting past it. Maybe we’ve gone bankrupt, destroyed a marriage, ruined our credit rating, damaged our reputation, alienated our children, wrecked our health, or committed a crime and wound up in prison. And we can’t imagine how we could ever put the Humpty Dumpty of our lives together again.

Can’t help wondering if Michael Milken felt that way. In the late 1980s he became one of the poster children for the wretched excesses of Wall Street. Competitors dubbed him the “Junk Bond King,” because of his skill in trading high-yield securities. Then when it all fell apart during the insider-trading scandals, he was indicted on 98 charges of racketeering and securities fraud.

Downs

Milken struck a deal, pleading guilty to securities and reporting violations. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The Securities and Exchange Commission barred him from ever again working in the securities industry. And he wound up paying around $900 million in fines and settlements.

It gets worse.

Thanks to good behavior and his cooperation with authorities in the larger investigation, Milken was required to serve only 22 months of his sentence. But he had little time to enjoy his freedom. Shortly after his 1993 release, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Life expectancy: 18 months.

After achieving so much wealth and success, it appeared Milken would die young and disgraced.

But he didn’t—perhaps because there was more to Michael Milken than the headlines led people to believe.

Although portrayed solely as a “greed is good” type, Milken wasn’t simply a man who made money and spent it on a lavish personal lifestyle. As a child, he’d been a block captain for the American Cancer Society, collecting change to fund cancer research. His community involvement had continued through his teen and young-adult years, culminating in 1982 with the founding of the Milken Family Foundation, which supports medical research and education programs—most notably, the Milken Educator Awards.

Ups

Though things looked bleak, Milken knew he could still have a positive impact on the world—and find redemption. So when cancer threatened, he fought back.

His regimen included a strong emphasis on a healthy lifestyle and eating plan, which he shared with the public by co-authoring The Taste for Living Cookbook: Mike Milken’s Favorite Recipes for Fighting Cancer and The Taste for Living WORLD Cookbook: More of Mike Milken’s Favorite Recipes for Fighting Cancer and Heart Disease.

The year of his prison release, Milken founded the Prostate Cancer Foundation, which has provided competitive research grants to more than 1,500 programs at 200 research centers in 20 countries. It’s the world’s largest philanthropic source of funds for prostate cancer research. By increasing government and private support, the PCF has helped build a $10-billion global research enterprise. In 2007, Milken launched the Melanoma Research Alliance. He’s chairman of the Milken Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank focused on improving economic conditions. The Institute’s annual Global Conference draws more than 3,000 influential leaders and decision makers from nearly 60 nations. And he’s chairman of FasterCures, another think tank devoted to improving treatment outcomes for life-threatening diseases.

After leaving prison, if Michael Milken had simply wanted to curl up and die … he could have. Instead, he remembered he was more than the sum of his mistakes, and he pushed the mountains of illness, career setbacks, and negative press out of his way. Today he’s living a productive life with his wife of more than 40 years, working for the betterment of society—and being recognized more for his successes than his failures.