 We all experience pain, discomfort, disappointment, and frustrations. That difficulty is an opportunity to get stronger, to develop character, to gain a new perspective. Anybody can fall apart; anybody can get bitter—that’s easy. But what that’s doing is wasting your pain. That pain is not there to stop you; it’s there to develop you, to prepare you, to increase you. In 1982, researchers aboard the space shuttle Columbia did an experiment with honeybees. They took them up into space to study the effects of weightlessness on them. According to a NASA memo, the bees “were unable to fly normally and tumbled into weightlessness.” Then it was reported that “the bees have all gotten stationary.” The bees did not have to use their wings, did not have to exert any effort, did not have any resistance. They just floated around. Later they all died. They may have loved having it easy, having no adversity, but they weren’t created for that. You might say that they enjoyed the ride, but they died. We need life’s challenges, struggles, and hardships. They make us better. Don’t just go through the challenge. Grow through it. Learn the lesson, develop the new mindset, improve your skills, and you will come out stronger on the other side!  Hard work, practice, and extra effort are the keys to success in everything you do. When you do just enough to get by, problems are inevitable and you never feel good about yourself.
Black Belt Champions set goals and never give up. They give 100% of their effort and energy to accomplishing the task. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have bad days or feel a little off. That happens to everyone. The key is to show up the next day ready to do your best and stay determined to move one step closer to achieving your goal. I have never seen anyone fail to achieve a Black Belt, but I have seen people give up too soon! Check out this story about actor Jim Carrey’s non quitting spirit... When Carrey was 14 years old, his father lost his job, and his family hit rough times. They moved into a VW van on a relative’s lawn, and the young aspiring comedian—who was so dedicated to his craft that he mailed his resume toThe Carroll Burnett Show just a few years earlier, at age 10—took an eight-hours-per-day factory job after school to help make ends meet. At age 15, Carrey performed his comedy routine onstage for the first time—in a suit his mom made him—and totally bombed, but he was undeterred. The next year, at 16, he quit school to focus on comedy full time. He moved to LA shortly after, where he would park on Mulholland Drive every night and visualize his success. One of these nights he wrote himself a check for $10,000,000 for “Acting Services Rendered,” which he dated for Thanksgiving 1995. Just before that date, he hit his payday with Dumb and Dumber. He put the deteriorated check, which he’d kept in his wallet the whole time, in his father’s casket. Be sure to check out our martial arts gift package special for kids and adults on our Facebook page and website! |
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