Embrace the gift of struggle

I was listening to where Mike Tyson was talking about how his son wanted to get into boxing and he said to his son, “You don’t want to get in the ring with a guy like me. I was a freaking animal and I would eat you up!”

What he meant is that most boxers are badly toughened up, angry and hungry. He further said, “The problem with my son is that he wasn’t hardened by life’s struggles like me, he lived a soft life.”

You see, you can be a good boxer ‘on paper’ in the ring but lack grit, resilience, hunger and anger from life’s struggles and that is enough to make you lose the fight of life. It’s sad that many people go through life avoiding and running away from struggles and ultimately miss out on their gift of life which is grit and resilience, the major ingredients of peak performance.

This is the same as career growth. You may have all the paper qualifications and good intentions to reach the top, but without resilience, you won’t get far in your career.

Most people don’t realise that stress, emotions, and pressure are critical ingredients for peak performance. It’s important for us to understand that it’s not the absence of these ingredients that make us perform better, it’s the utilisation of that chemistry that enables us to produce what would be considered peak performance.

Grit, that ability to fight resistance, is what sets champions from losers. Grit is the food for champions and those who see themselves reaching the top of the ladder. Grit is developed through life’s struggles, hence you must embrace your struggles.

Embrace the gift of struggles. Your brain is designed for struggles not ease.