Thesis Wednesday: Perspective & the Subconscious Mind

The best thing that ever happened to me was blowing out my knee.

Think about what I just said.

The best thing that has happened to me since I began training martial arts when I first started college, and across boxing, wing chun, Judo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, fighting in MMA, submission grappling....the best thing that has happened to me in all that time was that I blew out my knee.

I was full of limiting beliefs.
Beliefs that I was not athletic. That at best I could train, compete, but that I was the middle of the pack. That I did not have the X factor, the mental edge, the confidence, the whatever it took to excell and compete in the top percentage of the elite.

I was still relatively successful in competition b/c I trained long and hard.
But I realized after losing 3 MMA fights in a row and blowing out my knee that there was something wrong with my environment both externally and internally.

For all my training, I was not seeing the results that I perceived others were getting despite their training less.

I had let other people around me affect my personal belief about my ability.
I had listened to the limiting beliefs and the negative input of others. I had let what I believed was a rational acceptance of limitations truly limit myself and my ability to perform at my utmost potential.

Teenagers call them haters. You can call them whatever you like.
But there will always be those people prepared to tell you what you cannot do.
This is largely if not entirely based on their own inadequacies, shortcomings, and acceptance of what they have not done and continue to choose not to do while they rationalize that passive acceptance on their part.

Have you ever noticed that many of the successful people will often say that anyone can be successful?
And yet, the people who will most often tell you that you cannot be successful say it with such malice and bitterness that its clear they are clearly unhappy with themselves and likely their life as well.
A self-made (again, out of context term) millionaire will tell you that you can make a million dollars.
A homeless man will point to the myriad of factors that keep anyone from making a million dollars....b/c he perceives that he has been kept from making a million dollars.
I do not discount the struggles of others, but I would argue the homeless in America have a largesse of opportunity and support that the VAST majority of the world's homeless do not.

I've never had a truly happy, successful person tell me that I could not be successful.
I have had, however, lots of moderately successful (relative assessment, I know) but largely unhappy people tell me I could not or would not achieve things.
In particular when you voice your objective or desire for something they have not, will not, or due to age, life choices, responsibility to family/work et cetera and thus truly cannot do.

What they really mean is that "I have not done that" so I believe that you cannot do it either.

So what's the point?

Eventually, at the end of your life, all those excuses, all those naysayers, all the whatever you used to rationalize your failures and undone wishes and desires will not matter.
You and you alone are holding the bag as your last breath expires, your synapses fire one last time and you are no longer alive.

Personally, I would prefer to spend the waking days and hours I do have remaining chasing those goals and pursuing those passions as far as my will, desire, heart, and determination will carry me.