Are You Willing to Keep Moving Forward?
If Not, You’re Going to Get Left Behind.
“Let me tell you something you already know,” Rocky says to his son. “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.”
To me, there’s a case against tragic optimism. There are dangers in thinking everything will always be rosy and “okay.” And there are problems with thinking that you’ll come out on top even if your only weapon is a positive mind.
Yet no matter our mindsets, time and time again we’re struck down by what happens to us as we’re forced to deal with life’s misfortunes. Because as much as we like to think so, we’re not masters of life. Far from it.
Instead of being dangerously optimistic, we can become agents of change; instead, we can become masters of adaptation and the “pivot” — only then do we really stand a chance at thriving in life.
In it’s own way, life forces us to deal with setbacks and shortcomings. It throws challenges and obstacles that make surmounting those challenges even harder. That’s just how things are.
No matter who we are, bad things can happen to us simply because bad things happen to people, regardless if they’re “good” or “bad.” So if we don’t learn how to deal with setbacks and shortcomings,we’ll fall back in the race and be lost.
Yet, even if we trip we can still win. In fact, tripping is really part of the whole thing. “Failing” is the new winning. Because if you do not fail, you cannot win.
How do you expect to if you can’t even open yourself up to the idea of stumbling first, anyways?
Life does not reward those who deal with their setbacks. Life is indiscriminate. It does not care what happens to you. Life is free from racial biases, from bigotry, from hatred and from emancipation.
Life treats everyone equally no matter their hand. It doesn’t care if you think it’s fair. It doesn’t care what you think at all. It simply is and it simple does, and you can learn to accept it or move out of it’s way and hide from it.
Life does not carry wrath, though, because it does not care what happens to you. That much is clear and always will be, regardless of how much we desire to distort and hide the lens of the truth from all to see.
Why, then, do so many of us escape the traps of life, while so many of us fall and perish to the iron will of life? Because if we’re built to pivot and adapt as humans naturally are, why do we fear change so much and give in to inaction so often of the time?
There’s a reason why complaining does nothing for you, except reward your mind for dodging responsibility and gaining sympathy and recognition from others who aren’t even trying as well. It’s because we crave that recognition why we complain so much (even from ourselves).
Depending on how we feed off people, we necessarily complain more to others or to ourselves because the mind loves to feel rewarded for dodging it’s tasks.
Yet it’s how we accept this defeat and how we view our setbacks that matters. That’s what makes us champions or losers — not much how we like something, but how we deal with it.
As Mohammad Ali said, “I hated every minute of training. But I told myself, don’t quit. Suffer now and live the life of a champion.”
Still, how many of us are hiding behind this excuse of “not-doing” that we are fuelled by inaction? That we do everything that’s easy because then we can’t fail at doing anything “hard?” Because if we do not fail, we cannot succeed; yet if we do not try, we can never fail (and always succeed in a strange way).
As Rocky tells his son, “somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you’re no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow.”
Sound familiar? It certainly did to me. He goes on to tell his son that…
“You me, or 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. That’s how winning is done!”
That’s how we become champions. We train. We take the hits. We keep on going when everybody else would quit. We keep on going, especially when our minds tell us to quit. And we do this by developing the discipline to keep on going no matter what.
Because if we ever lose sight of that, we lose sight of our progress itself.
And it doesn’t take long for us to stop winning once we do that.
Rocky finishes by saying this, “Now if you know what you’re worth now go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits and not pointing fingers and saying you ain’t where you want to be because of him or her or nobody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!”
When did we stop believing that? At what point did we change? When id our minds convince us it was okay to stop moving? That it was okay to give up on our dreams and enter into stagnant motion?
Maybe that was society? Or maybe it was just the people we surrounded ourselves with, how we told others it was okay to do what others were doing simply because others were doing it?
How and when doesn’t matter. Neither does why.
The only thing that matters is now. Because, as Rocky tells his son, “until you start believing in yourself, you ain’t gonna have a life.”
Same goes for you.
Forget everything else. Forget everyone else. What matters to you? What dreams drive you?
Focus on that, and then go out and get them. Go out and make them come true. Just remember you gotta take the hits and build up an iron will if you ever want to have a chance of making it through.
I hope this helped you in some way.
If it did, I’d love if you could share it with your friends and help get the word out for me!
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