
Tenacity. Grit. Perseverance.
I’m James. Filipino Canadian. Product & Interaction Designer. Muay Thai Kickboxing practitioner & Anime enthusiast in that order. Being Product and Interaction Designer by trade is of a passion of mine, and it’s taught me that I can always learn something new and gain insights from it
Being a new designer can be tough. Why is that? Well, there’s a lot of reasons. The Job search and market saturation pretty much goes without saying. The role consists of a broad umbrella of different disciplines, each of which is a profession in their own right and then communicating them into one cohesive narrative as a jack of all trades. Information is vast, frequently ambiguous, but it’s always changing. You can’t know everything in this domain, so you have to focus on your strengths. And I often get asked, “James, What is your greatest strength?”
I thought long and hard about this, and what I am about to tell you is pretty damned simple. That one fundamental strength that has carried me through my journey since starting a new career is something that most are familiar with and can relate to.
Tenacity. Grit. Perseverance. That determination to keep going even when you’re not feeling good about yourself but that passion for what you’re doing will drive you through. Let me give you an example that helped shaped it for me.
If you’ve just met me, I have been training for years in stand up fighting, specifically boxing and Muay Thai (a type of combat fighting from Thailand that uses fists, elbows, knees, and shins for strikes, blocks, and takedowns. Working out at a 24-hour fitness was boring, and starting Muay Thai fight training seemed like a fun and smart idea for a guy in his 30s past his prime to train against spry young men in their early 20s, so I took the plunge. In the beginning, it would take me literally weeks to understand how to execute a move, whereas someone else in the class would have working knowledge after a couple of days.
My coach, A two-time Lumpinee national champion from Thailand, was consistently frustrated as I could never get a particular technique right. He would scold me in his broken English.
“Jame- you coming every day for two weeks and still don listen. You Cover! Protect your head, hands up.” The pad holder, counter-attacking, I would get hit. Hard. Of course, without hands up, I got licked.
“Ahhh, what’s wrong with you, man! You just got knocked out! If you were fighting, you got knocked out!” My coach would wave me off and go to the next person during class.
Disappointed, I would ask myself, “ James is this worth it? You’re a grown-ass man taking this punishment, this screaming. Being made to feel like you’re less than?”
I took him aside begged for his patience being that I have always had a slower learning curve than most, a shortcoming I have come to accept.
“I’m the teacher. You’re the student, this my gym, respect it. Just listen to what I say, do it.” he calmly said. With that, I replied, “Yes, Sir.” And I shut up.
Following that day with every command, frustrated comment, and the rare praise uttered from his lips, I always replied with a hearty” Yes Sir” for five days a week, two hours a day for seven years. I slowly learned the fundamentals, graduated to intermediate, even learned traditional boxing, and worked my nerves up to spar — still terrified of being knocked out by testosterone-driven 25-year-olds.
I ended up mastering form when it came to knee and elbow strikes, in which my coach would have me teach fundamentals to some of the beginners in the class from time to time.
Recently as I arrived at our gym’s annual Christmas Party celebration, my coach approached me in his drunken stupor, “Jame, you were one of my worst students when you first started. The worst! But you came every day and never gave up. I’ve seen most guys who have come after you and would never come back. But you keep coming back, and you’re good! I know you don’t want to compete, but if you want to train with fight team, I train you”.
I was worthy of becoming a fighter, or at least train like one. Now I’m too old to fight, and even though Coach probably doesn’t remember saying it, that drunken comment was enough validation for me. It was then, and there I understood why he was so tough on me. That was the way Thailand fighters trained to filter out the weak and cultivate the fighting spirit of those who persevered. Regardless of how hard the criticism or how it made me feel, it was so I could take from it, learn to do better, Push Past the Punishment. To appreciate feedback and critique because it only serves to inform us to know what we need to improve so we could become better fighters. Better designers. Better individuals. To keep growing.
Tenacity, grit, and perseverance, this is my strength, and it affects almost all aspects of my life today. A great man named Rocky Balboa once said, “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It can be a very mean and nasty place, and no matter tough how you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. Nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward.”
This is also your strength. So I encourage you, do what you love. Find that inner grit in you. Be tenacious. Fail. Persevere, and do it again because that’s how winning is done.
