SPA 032: Learn to Bounce Back From Adversity and Be A Comeback Master

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.” – Vince Lombardi

Today, I want to get started by talking a little bit about courage and grit.

In my opinion, grit is the by-product of courage.

While Courage leads to everything, it gets you started to dream, it gets you to start making goals, planning and working towards your goals. It leads to you deciding and committing to your tasks, it determines your direction and it may also lead you to fail or succeed.

But what you should be focussed right now should not be about failing, it should be about not faltering in the face of adversity.

It’s about consistently moving even though something is pulling you back. You may be moving forward or backward, you have to understand that either way will happen to you when you take the road of a serious athlete.

Of course you have to first have that end game or destination in mind with all your plans plotted out on a road map, set your goals appropriately with your course clearly drawn out. If you haven’t got this done, refer to episode number 9 to learn more and hop back to this episode.

Then as you run through your journey on paper, you realised you will meet challenges like a possible storm, some bad weather, you injured your ankle, your vehicle broke down or you lost your keys, or someone may walk up to you and say you are ugly and you aren’t sure if you can accept that, whatever, you get the point.

You’ve been there and it seems like there’s always something out to stop you. It’s situation like that to make you stop and think if you should carry on with your grand plan and possibly meet the dangers along the way.

If you’ve decided to get started, that’s your first courage in play, especially as a competitive athlete, you don’t go through days being comfortable as much as possible. The moment you get comfortable, it’s time for you to get uncomfortable, and the cycle goes on. When you take on your journey as a competitive athlete, you are exposed to criticisms, speculation, injury or even emotional and physical harm.

You are in fact putting yourself in a very vulnerable position, susceptible to risks of all levels. If you are in triathlon, you may have this phobia of a mass start, if you are a fighter, it’s virtually life and death situation, anything can happen. We understand it can be scary.

Some situations inevitably lead you to think that you are never good enough, or that you’ve reached your peak. So if you think you are low in confidence, not sure of yourself or hear voices in your head or others saying you are a coward or playing safe. It’s not that you don’t have any courage. You do, you’ve used that courage of yours to get started. That’s great news for you.

Then what’s the bad news? Bad news is, you will only go as far as your courage can take you. Thing is, when you are in competitive sports, not only do you need to bounce back, you need to bounce back in the shortest time possible and quickly do something to dominate the game.

If you can bounce back, that’s good, that’s the first step, then you cannot just stay there, you have to garner another set of courage to move to the next stage to earn more points, score more goals, pick up pace, whatever that will lead you to ultimately reach your goal.

Best Resources:

Best Performance Books

Subscribe to StarPlayer Academy!