Terminally Optimistic (What My Brain Tumor Taught Me About Living Fully)

You can’t choose how long you live. But you can choose how fully.

At the age of 30, Guinness World Record-holding athlete Iain Ward was told he had terminal brain cancer. He didn’t crumble. He ran—literally turning his diagnosis into a global fundraising mission and personal call to arms. His platform, The King of Chemo, has since raised over $500,000 for cancer charities and built a community of over 14 million people worldwide.

Now, in his first book—the profits of which will be channeled into his fundraising activities—Iain shares everything he’s learned about what matters most when you stop pretending you have forever.

Written with humor, urgency, and stunning emotional honesty, this book invites you to:

• Reframe your perspective on fear, failure, and time
• Break out of passivity and start showing up
• Connect more deeply to others—and to your own sense of purpose
• Recognize what really matters, and stop waiting to live it

Structured around big, reflective questions—What are you waiting for? Who are you living for?—this is part motivational manifesto, part personal reckoning. Iain explores how grief can fuel gratitude, how limits can spark momentum, and how clarity and purpose can reshape your entire life, even when you’re running out of time.

This is a book about living like you mean it.