How to Provide True Support
Behind all great individuals is a core group of people who support them. These people help lobby for their goals and enable them to accomplish more than they thought possible. Recently, while on a Christmas road trip to see my parents, my intermittent fascination with the fighting game community (FGC) led me to stumble upon an interview showcasing true support. The title character is a personality in the FGC named Mike Ross.
Whether it be due to his incredible story or unique charisma, Mike Ross has been involved in a few media productions within the fighting game community throughout his career. He was the subject of a documentary showcasing his road to Evo 2009, starred in a YouTube channel with his partner and friend Ryan Gootecks Gutierrez, and has been a part of televised question panels and interviews about his success in the Fighting Game Community starting from at least half a decade ago.
Mike Ross has been a professional fighting game player for quite some time and was previously an outspoken representative of the FGC as a whole. The interview I was lucky to stumble upon was conducted on the YouTube version of a podcast I hadn’t listened to before called “Mama: We made it!”. In this interview, Mike Ross discusses many topics in his career, from his rise to professional success to what he hopes for the FGC in the future.
The main thread of the show revolves around Mike Ross discussing his real “I made it” moment, which happened for him when earned the right to be flown all-expenses paid to San Francisco for the finals of one of the biggest Street Fighter tournaments at the time. Game Stop hosted the tournament, and as a result of his planning and performance he accomplished his dream of standing on the main stage, being paid to play a fighting game at the highest level.
Mike went on to perform extremely well and was nearly undefeated for the entire tournament finals. After his stellar performance, he was approached by many teams mentioning they might have a spot on the team for him, meaning he could potentially be sponsored to do the thing he loved.
He was still doing what he loved, but he mentions at times he was struggling financially.
This financial struggle led to a rock bottom experience.
The Fall after the Rise
This aspect of his story seemed weird to me. After almost 10 years of playing at a competitive level, his dreams had finally started to come to fruition. He had proved to himself that was one of the best. Mike even started to make money (albeit slowly) pursuing his passion. How could he hit rock bottom?
It turns out that even though he already started to be successful, he wasn’t technically set up with a steady income. In an industry like professional gaming at that time, the grind was long and the rewards were mostly not financial. Many top players would train for hours a day for years at a time and also need to work on the side in order to support their passion. Much like many of us in this world, Mike still worried about money and felt the pressures of struggling in the modern day world.
While trying to use his success to pursue his passion of improving the fighting game community as a whole, Mike Ross was given an opportunity to take a job as a 911 dispatcher. The idea of having stability tempted him, and he even started to reason with himself about how he could potentially maintain. This put him in a tough decision: he could either continue to pursue his professional gaming career with the fear and pressures of not having a steady income, or he could take this steady 9–5 job and only have small amounts of time to compete. At the level Mike was used to playing fighting games on, if he wasn’t putting in hours of training, he probably wouldn’t be able to complete at that level.
After struggling with the concept of doing what he loved and having a steady paycheck, he decided to bring the idea up to his father.
Not Your Average Pep Talk
I’m not sure how your parents talked to you about work, but my father always told me to take the safe path. He supports me in most decisions I make, But he is more excited about decisions I make which ensure that I’ll be taken care of financially.
There were a couple times growing up when I mentioned pursuing less stable career paths and was met with disappointment. My father either shook his head and laid out in detail how it was impossible for me to pursue a passion or discussed how it is really hard to work in that particular field and immediately changed the subject.
Compared to many children who voice their dreams to their parents, my father’s reaction was tame. I have heard of people being told that they “are too stupid to be a doctor” or other extreme reactions when telling their parents what they want to pursue in their lives. I have also talked with coworkers who had parents that wouldn’t even discuss work or the future with their kids. I can imagine most parents would want their children to take a path they feel is safe. One that can provide a stable income and a fairly happy life for their children.
According to Mike Ross, his dad said the exact opposite.
The Sound of True Support
“Do Something You Love and the Money will Come”
-Mike Ross’s Dad
At a few times when Mike felt potentially nervous at continuing to take risks and maybe "not make it", his father was willing to support him to pursue his dream. Even though his father probably felt fear for the safety and well-being of his child, he knew that Mike was capable and supported him in continuing to grow into his unique self. Mike Ross’s dad also knew that as long as his son pursued what he loved passionately, he was capable of making some kind of career off what he loved.
This type of support shocked me. After a life of feeling pressure at home to take the safe route, to hear that there are people and parents out there who trust their children to figure out their own way and are focused on helping their children grow into their unique selves was comforting.
Throughout my adult life, I have read anecdotes of people who have received and shown true support in pursuing a life more congruent with their passions. These accounts tend to have common themes which are important to understand in order to not only provide genuine support for people in their endeavors, but also to attract and keep around people who provide you true support. Once recognized, we can all learn to show and receive true support in our endeavors.
Accept a Person When They Fail
Failure is an inevitable step of life and learning. In fact, there are many quotes on the subject that praise failure’s benefits. Some people like Sara Blakely, the creator of Spanx, and her father even suggest we seek it out.
“My dad growing up encouraged me and my brother to fail. The gift he was giving me is that failure is (when you are) not trying versus the outcome. It’s really allowed me to be much freer in trying things and spreading my wings in life.”
-Sara Blakely (cite)
This might seem counter-intuitive. I’ve personally failed for a variety of reasons in my life. I’ve even failed for some reasons where it didn’t lead to my eventual success.
It is important we qualify which type of failure should be supported and sought out. Sara mentioned above that her father encouraged her to “not try versus the outcome”. It is a failure that results from exploration of a new, interesting path that is valuable. Not failure that results from inaction.
Failure that results from entering a broad space, doing the best you can and coming up short should be supported. The pushing of your own limits to the point of almost breaking is growth-oriented failure. Growth-oriented failure is the type of failure that will result in a person increasing their ability and becoming more resilient in a problem domain. This type of failure will also probably result in a person becoming more resilient to the pitfalls of life.
However, people can only learn from failure when they are paying attention and not freaking out. One of the ways for them to not freak out is to have a support group to lift them up through the failure and encourage them to keep growing.
Accept a Person as They Are Now
It’s you I like,
It’s not the things you wear,
It’s not the way you do your hair
But it’s you I like
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys
They’re just beside you.-Mr. Rogers
One of the main things that really stood out to me about the story of many people who accomplish great things is the amount of consistent effort required to actually accomplish that thing.
There was a paper written by a group of professors working in many different schools that analyzed a collection of prodigies, geniuses, and professional game players who really made a name for themselves and produced their best work. The work examines similar traits between these top performers and focuses particularly on the length of time these individuals worked before actually producing a genius work.
The paper hypothesizes that it is only after working for 10 years in a problem domain, practicing in a way that pushes your limits by trying new things, can a real genius or expert emerge. Regardless of who you are, it takes about that much time of concentrated effort to actually perform at a level that would be considered genius. In the case of child prodigies, The paper’s authors’ hypothesis is that they just started earlier in their lives. Regardless of who they were, they still required roughly the same amount of time to create an masterful work of art.
A Lost Art
As a society, we tend not to realize that the people we see at the top of their game have actually been practicing in the dark consistently for at least 8–10 years. Whether it be the top youtube channel or the greatest performance in Game 7 in the NBA finals, these acts of greatness were accomplished on a solid foundation of discipline, focused practice, and time.
Following the advent of the ability to be constantly connected to each other and the improvement of content delivery and internet speeds, the actual time it takes to become great at something isn’t widely accepted and always known. Many major stars seem to just suddenly become great or famous, being born out of the ether as a higher performer than everyone else. Even the idea of an overnight success doesn’t tend to really happen overnight.
Because of the increase in the amount of people who put out content or have a stage to shine, it may take even longer to be recognized for great feats in our current day and age. Even so, the formula for incredible performance remains the same: years of practice by yourself, where no one knows who you are. And it is precisely this point in time that those who are focused on improving their lives need the most support.
When we support people in pursuing the life they want, we are really just telling them that who they are is valuable. True support shows people that they don’t have to do anything sensational for people to love them. Only when we accept and support the “ordinary” people we know today can they become the best version of themselves tomorrow.
Surround Yourself and Others with True Support
When we are children, we have limited control who is in our support circle. If we are born to parents who have limiting beliefs about jobs, issues, or education, we will be subject to those limitations.
After we become adults, we gain the freedom to only be subject to the influences we allow into our lives. The only limiting factors we have on what we do are the ones we consciously and subconsciously impose on ourselves. We can even control the degree to which we pursue relationships with specific people. So we must learn to do this wisely.
I recently experienced a growth of awareness on this issue in my life. I have a close personal relationship with someone whose opinion I valued immensely growing up. Each time I expressed my crazy dreams, wishes, or passions to them, they would either mention that I didn't have the natural gifts to support that vision, or they would tend to "throw cold water on me" (潑我冷水) and kill the dream I earnestly desired to attain.
Since I valued this person's opinion highly, each time this happened I would either accept their version of reality and quit or would internalize this belief and begin to hear their words when talking to myself.
Later on, I realized the negative effect being close to them had on me and chose to stop seeing the world through their eyes. It turned out that their version of reality was just as valid as one filled with encouragement, and I have been able to accomplish a few extant dreams from my past simply by choosing not to stay in close contact with them. Other people's opinion of reality are not more or less valuable than yours. In most cases, you can trust your passions and motivations to be achievable, take actions to follow them, and slowly build the life you want to live.
You don't have to invest in the same level of connection with each friend or person you meet in your life, and just because you have been best friends or even family members with someone doesn't mean you have to believe and think exactly the same way they do. Consciously look to surround yourself with people who provide true support to the person you want to become. Only the people who consistently offer true support can enable you to lead a better life.
Show True Support to Yourself
Surrounding yourself with a strong support group will not solve all of your self-confidence problems. If you acquired negative self-care habits during your upbringing, you must also learn to take care of yourself. Show yourself real support and treat yourself with kindness and confidence. This goes doubly when you are going through hardship.
Many of us witnessed our parents talk negatively to themselves, berate themselves or call themselves names when they couldn’t do something as well as they thought they should. When people are in that type of environment long enough, they internalize these habits and start to believe the same things about themselves.
Another famous fighting game player, ZeRo, talks to this subject:
Everybody at some point in their life will say, ‘Wow, maybe I can’t do this.’ For every time you tell yourself can’t do something, you need to tell yourself twice that you can do it.
-ZeRo
The truth is most of the time you can do the things you tell yourself you can't. If you constantly belittle yourself, the probability of accomplishing those goals decreases. You must take actions to trust in yourself and push your life forward. Yes, there are certain goals you may never accomplish, but most lofty goals people possess can be attained with sufficient time and effort. It is only through strong internal and external support structures do people accomplish these goals.
Give Support
Take a minute and think of all the people who have really supported you in your life. Do they know how much of an influence they had on you? Have you let them know how much they mean to you?
If those people are still around, share how much their support benefited your life. You can even take things a step further and try to model how they supported you and show support to others. The world only becomes a better place with the addition of true support. Each time you support someone to better themselves and develop stronger passions, the entire world experiences a net positive. As jobs change and we gain a greater ability to make unique contributions to the world on a broader scale, we all need stronger support structures to accomplish our goals.
View this post on my blog.
