We all go through periods of feeling defeated – the loss of a job, a financial hit, a reprimand from a partner or boss, or even waking up and realizing “I’ve been doing this same thing for years and I don’t like it, I don’t know if I ever did, and now I’m stuck.” But what strikes me most about when we hit these times is not that they happen (they do, they will, and they will again), nor that we we feel downtrodden, but the weight which we allow it to be in our lives. Because very often, it’s the meaning that we attach to the event that is what really drags us down.
A friend of mine confided in me that his marriage is in trouble. His wife was unhappy in their marriage and with who he had become. She began to withdraw from their family life, pulling lates nights and weekends at the office. Understandably, this threw him into a depression, but his feeling defeated actually made matters worse. That’s the slippery slope of life; when life gets hard, the more we feel defeated and the less effective we are at solving the problem.
I’m not a big fan of relating life to a game, but there are times when that’s the best metaphor – and this is one of those times. Life takes work. Relationships take work. Work takes work. We have to continually be practicing, working out and getting better. LeBron James gets up before the crack of dawn to dribble and shoot basketballs, even (or especially) after a heart-breaking loss – because that’s what it takes to be a champion. That’s what it takes to lose, lose, and lose some more before winning that first championship.
Your life is no different. In order to become the champion of your life, you need to practice. Practice at Life, practice at your relationship, practice at being the person you are striving to become. LeBron lost a lot of playoffs and a couple championship series before he was able to win one. You, too, will lose a lot in life – and you can become greater for it, as we see with great athletes who also grow in defeat.
Just because you’re married, in a relationship, a parent, or even human, and doing what you do, that doesn’t mean you’re doing the work to get better. It’s not that “now I’m a married, I’ve got this.” And even more true – just because you’re alive, doesn’t mean “you’ve got this.”
We carry this great misconception that if we are alive, we must know how to do Life, have the right thoughts and ideas about it, and are even good at it. And because we think that we know how to do Life, we think we should be able to fix it quickly when things are hard. No! Our problems don’t come quickly. They’re based in patterns we’ve been in for years that we’ll need to shift. A great athlete practices form every day. They adjust poor tendencies to better ones. They practice. You, too, must practice. If you come home to an unhappy spouse, you must practice using tools of relationship. And it can take weeks, months, years to fix the habits that have caused you to miss too many shots.
My uncle was the team capitan on the Pacoima High basketball team the year they won the State Championship. But, while others went on to college and pro playing careers, he didn’t. In his words, “I thought I was so good, I didn’t practice.” Yes, life is very much like sports. If you just play, you won’t progress. You need to do you version of getting up at the ass crack of dawn to dribble and shoot hoops in the gym. Even if you’re LeBron or Steph Curry of Life, and you make 99% of your practice shots and think “damn, I’m good, I’ve got this, I’ll just sleep in an extra hour,” you’ll slip. And then wonder how you got here.
We ultimately know so little and then, when things don’t go as we hope they would, we get defeated. Of course we get defeated! We’re novices at Life. And when things get challenging, we don’t realize that we’re just playing, not practicing. I recommended to my friend three books: “Nonviolent Communication” by Marshall Rosenberg, “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do” by Amy Morin, and “The Untethered Soul” by Michael A. Singer. Or to take a weekend and do the Landmark Forum or the ManKind Projeect’s New Warrior Training. Learn (and PRACTICE) speaking non-violently. If you’re not being heard, do the work to find out what’s wrong with your communication techniques (and not looking to make the other see their problems). Let go of the need to control any outcomes. Take responsibility for YOUR part. Be curious, learn and grow.
You want to be the champion of your Life, so get your ass out of bed and practice. When something isn’t working – fix the only thing you can: yourself. Put in your best and hardest. Even if you feel the team around you isn’t supporting you, you can still be the King (or Queen). You can still fail (which you will) and you can still have bad days when the world says “it’s your fault.” Take the responsibility. Put it on your shoulders like any hero would and take that weight to the gym of Life and make yourself stronger. You don’t feel bad for LeBron – he’s lost and lost, come back to win , lost again, and won some more. Just like you.