We all get rattled from time to time. One of the guys I work with took a nasty body shot in sparring the other night. It was about 2 minutes into a 5 minute round. Boom! Liver shot! Now confusion, pain, and loss of gameplan. For about 45 seconds I watched him fall apart while trying to survive. You could see the panic creep in. We never stopped because that’s what warriors do when faced with adversity, they keep fighting. To get him back on a positive track I yelled out a few keys to ground him. “Forget what just happened and make this a 2 minute round!”
Shawn Tompkins, recently deceased amazing trainer and friend, once told me a thing he used to keep his guys focused on winning when something wasn’t going well. He would tell his guys to just focus on whatever time they had left instead of worrying about the past. Your job is to win. You define how much time you have and you come up with something that can bring home the W. Just lost 2 and a half rounds. OK, now you have 2 minutes to knock them out. Its all about focusing on what you can do instead of what you couldn’t.
To be a successful fighter, you need to think about finishing your fight. No matter how much time is left, as long as there is time, you have a chance to win. This is a win by KO sport. You need 1 shot to take away anything that happened before. No matter what you can set up victory.
The above is all about fighting but it carries value outside of training/fighting as well. To be successful we must stay focused on our goals no matter what comes our way. Adversity is just another opportunity. We can fold or we can take that opportunity to change and go for it. The only KO blow we can’t deal with is death, everything else we can comeback from.
In short, when things are not going your way you can change your view. Look at what is to come instead of dwelling on what just happened. What is in front of you is opportunity while the past is simply that, past.
Learn, live, move forward!
Brian Wright
Real Elite