Why me?
Oh no not again!
Why can’t I break through, what is holding me back?
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Over many years of working with elite athletes in almost every sport and now with many business owners, one of the things I have discovered is the higher the goal the more importance and commitment there is to improving 1% everyday becomes.
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Not often will you find a Champion in any field that does’t have a coach and mentor to help them grow through the challenges.
When a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it struggles to get out of the cocoon. It flaps and flaps about in what appears to be of no avail. But in the struggle it gains more and more wing strength, so much so that it finally breaks free and flies as a beautiful butterfly. In fact so strong that the Monarch butterfly can travel from Canada all the way down to Mexico and back again each year.
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When you look at your own struggles in this way, you can begin to get excited about who you are becoming in the process rather than being let down or defeated by the process of true growth.
I have worked with four Major League MVP’s for their teams and if you asked each one how they accomplished this feat they would tell you they began to see the struggle as a means to an end. They’d say it was a way to reach their goals rather than something that took them further away from them. When I played professional tennis I didn’t understand this concept.
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When I lost, I lost.
I didn’t know how to gain and learn from those momentary losses into expanding and growing, but I also didn’t have a clear conviction or desire towards being number one within my chosen sport. My goal was just to get a world-ranking, which I did, but I didn’t advance up the rankings because I wasn’t clear on my goals and struggles remained just that, a struggle.
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I did not know how to use that struggle towards propelling me to those goals.
Eight years after being off the tennis tour, a sponsor of a pro tournament in Canada offered to pay all of my expenses if I would come up and play the tournament. By this time I had eight years of coaching under my belt and had become a mental advancement junky. With my newfound new insights, I not only won the tournament, but beat the number one doubles team in the world while doing so.
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When you change how you look at challenges and find the opportunities in them your results drastically change and more importantly your love of the challenge brings you to a greater way of being.
My business partner and great friend, Roger Anthony, was a master at this. When he was seeking to work with a company and I would ask how the meeting went, Roger would many times say, “this must be really important so I am getting excited about this challenge.” I knew right in that moment the meeting didn’t go quite as planned. Roger knew there was always something very good that would be revealed because of the challenge. He believed that we never really loose when we are open to gaining from every step we courageously take.
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If you feel you are struggling to become a CHAMPION in your sport, business, or any other aspect of life, be like the butterfly who becomes stronger within the process. And, know what you are “becoming” in the process that will take you to new heights of success.
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