Winning is a State of Mind
“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” (Rocky Balboa 2006). This partial quote from the sixth Rocky film is entirely too true. When life knocks us down, at that point we have to make a decision. Do we stay down and accept defeat, or do we choose to get up and keep fighting? When you accept defeat and accept your loss, you fall into a pattern of accepting all your failures because losing is a state of mind, and it’s at that moment you have truly failed. But fortunately winning is a state of mind too. Winning and refusing to accept defeat is a mindset. The first step to being a winner is thinking like one. This was a tough lesson for me to learn but at this time in my life I am finally beginning to understand this concept in its entirety.
How do some people manage to shackle three to four ton elephants with nothing but a rope? The explanation lies in their upbringing. Its entire life the elephant is raised shackled to a rope, so when they grow to maturity they have no concept of how strong they truly are. Growing up my life was not one of perfection, but if I was given the opportunity I wouldn’t change a single aspect of my upbringing. Okay, maybe I would try to alter a few events. Such as my parent’s divorce or maybe a few grades I had received on my tests, but not much else. But I grew up shackled by my own “rope”. Growing up I was somewhat of an introvert, but what kid isn’t a little shy when they’re young? But that personality trait mixed with my shyness and my somewhat emotional self was a combination that hindered me to a certain extent from achiev...
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... like some might have, I wouldn’t have played. Especially if I thought I’d further hurt myself, but since I thought I could contribute to my team, it was my obligation to them to try. And although I played with caution, I played without fear and with confidence in myself. “…..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!” (Rocky Balboa 2006). By choosing to get up when life knocked me down I discovered that even at my lowest points I can still persevere and achieve great feats. My life is by no means easy, but what some might see as setbacks I see as life pushing me into the “deep end pool”. I see a challenge and an opportunity to try and swim and achieve greatness. And once you get into the habit of “swimming” winning becomes a state of mind.
Theodore Roosevelt used an analogy involving an arena to express how it feels to be judged when you are trying your hardest. The man in the arena is trying his best, yet there are people on the sidelines spectating his life and judging his every move. They do not understand what it is like to be in the arena and haven’t had the courage to try, yet they feel as if they have the right to criticize the man in the arena based on his techniques and successes. Roosevelt warns not to listen to judgmental people and to continue to strive. The man in the arena fails repeatedly, but he has the resiliency to try again. He knows that as long as he endures, he will end up with either victorious or knowing that he at least had the courage to try. Failure,
where a person knows that he is going to lose and still continues to fight.
It’s the triumphs as well as the defeats, that I will remember most about my life when I look back in thirty years. If I can look back and say, “I didn’t think I could ever accomplish this, but I gave it my all.” Pursuing the next challenge along with being a well-rounded, compassionate person will allow me to consider my life a success in thirty years. Nothing in my life emulates this attitude towards what I will consider a success, in terms of pushing my limits, in thirty years, than my current pursuit of collegiate level sports.
We were going to win the game. That was the end of it. I knew it. We were the winners of that game. I stood up and yelled in a voice that even frightened me. I didn’t scream about moving our feet, or calling the ball, I screamed about how big of winners we were. I was done with moping. For seven minutes of my life, I had forgotten that I could do anything I set my mind to, and I had given up. The worst seven minutes of my volleyball career were those seven minutes in the third game of the final match at Brighton Volleyball Tournament. I had put my determination down to wallow in my disappointment. Disappointment needs to build determination. I had decided a long time ago that there were certain things in life that I could do better than other people. Those were my gifts. I use my gifts to my full potential.
Elephants, although they are very large animals, are known to be graceful and sociable. They are among one of the most intelligent, sensitive animals on the planet, perhaps even approaching human intelligence and emotion. But lately, their behavior has changed. When we hear stories of elephants being violent we have to remember that they are wild animals. The fact that we have become so used to seeing them around people does not mean that as a whole they have become domesticated. According to many sources cited by Charles Siebert in his essay “An Elephant Crackup?” one of the reasons given to explain this weird change of behavior was “the precipitous collapse of elephant culture.”
Once there was a little boy who loved to play sports, although he was never naturally talented at them. He was never the fastest, never the strongest, and most definitely never the most coordinated. He liked to play all sorts of sports; basketball, baseball, soccer, football, and track. But one sport stood above all, and that was basketball. Which was ironic because that was probably the sport he was least naturally talented in. That little boy was me.
“Winning is great,sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time.”- Unknown. This quote is explored by Amy Tan’s short story The Rules of the Game, that teaches us about how pushing someone too hard can make them fail. In the short story it is about a girl name Waverly who finds many strategy to win in the game of chess. She has been in many tournament and win many games, but then something big happened. Waverly’s mom keep using her to show off and she told her mother she quit. After she said she will get back to playing chess, because of her mother’s one word it can ruin all of Waverly’s confidence in playing chess. Now Waverly isn’t able to play chess like
Everyone should alway try. No person should ever stop trying. Even when something is hard that does not mean we should stop trying. It is not good to give in just because it does not work the first time or we can not find the right way. In “The Marble Champ,” by Gary Soto, Lupe Medrano the main character, has a very hard time with sports. She is not good at any of them. The theme in The Marble Champ seen by Lupes experience is to always stay determined, and never give up. We see Lupe demonstrate this all throughout the story.
When my coach told me those nail biting words I had been waiting to hear for months, I was crushed and confused. My coach told me, "you're not big enough to play at this level". I was as talented as anyone else on the team, but because of my size I was characterized as incapable of playing. I took a step back and looked at the big picture. I knew there was a reason those words were said to me and from that exact moment I decided to change my life around. I was a standout player both my freshman and sophomore year and I was finally called up to play at the varsity level my junior year. I was one of the strongest players on the team and led the team to a district appearance for the first time in years. For the past couple of years, those words my coach told me have stayed in my head. It has determined me to work harder than anyone else not only on the field but off the field as
Along the rocky road that is my softball career, my team and I have learned quite a few lessons. Not only did we get to know each other and the game of softball, we were also taught about life. We learned that to get where we wanted to be, we had to push ourselves, constantly practicing and working hard. Our team also had to overcome our many obstacles through perseverance. Another thing we had to learn was how to believe in ourselves and each other. As a player on that team, these things that the game has taught us- working hard, persevering, and believing- have become my laws of life.
At this moment I challenged myself to always be better than the year I was before. I knew that to finish stronger and become a true champion you have to work when nobody is watching. I had to push myself to be better than I ever was before, my goal was to always move forward never backward. I went to the golf course and played a lot over that summer. I really focused on course management and the mental part of this difficult game. I felt very comfortable with my swing starting the next season firing scores in the mid eighty's. I qualified for Mid-Penns, Districts, and Regionals that year! I was named our most improved player on my team that year. The emotions I felt after this very successful season made me hungry for this feeling. I had to continue to use my failure from freshman year to continue to become a better player today. I have taken this experience and apply it to the way I approach everything I do. I want to work to be the best at something, I know what is needed to achieve this type of success. Failure can have a really positive outcome if the individual uses it as motivation to become better and achieve greater things than they have
This will prove to be especially important as I move on to college, and as I embark on my journey of being a student athlete at the University of Nevada Reno. I know that being a student athlete will be challenging in the sense that I will have so many obligations and so little time; however, this mentality will further help me achieve my goals both athletically and academically, as I refuse to settle for anything less that what I am capable of achieving. I know that at times it will be tough, but I also know that quitting is not an option. If I were to stop in the middle of a race right when it got tough, I would never be able to experience the triumph of finishing. In the end, the glory of the fight is one of the most rewarding elements of
Throughout a persons life, they are faced with different obstacles, and different challenges of all different types. My life in particular has been full of up and downs related especially towards my soccer career. In the novel The Pact, three boys, George, Rameck, and Sam are faced with many obstacles throughout their lives, where they must learn to overcome and achieve great success on their own will power. Essentially, I have done the same thing. My soccer career has been one of my most difficult life challenges creating the person I am today. I was always taught that soccer was to be about the love of the game and that it should be fun. Unfortunately, I faced many obstacles that I needed to overcome before I could truly love the game for what it was worth. I grew and continued to love the game, knowing little at the time of the obstacles I would be faced with, and would need to overcome.
There’s nothing like standing victorious on the field, court, or track after countless hours of hard work paying off. When you know you deserve it and you did everything to win it fair. Well, this feeling seems to be happening less and less these days as many athletes are going too far to win. Many of them are cheating, losing all of their achievements because they cheated, and are even ruining the sports that so many of us love playing and watching.
...in a lot of computer gaming events which were L.A.N. based & have achieved victory in college events. Involvement in sports has also meant that competitiveness and team-skills have become a part of my lifestyle, but I simply believe that I have a lot of patience and the willingness to learn and accept every challenge that comes my way.