Boxing and all of its martial cousins are disciplines based on the idea of avoiding physical attacks while trying to make contact with your own. Practitioners such as Bruce Lee took a philosophical approach to the art of physical combat. In no way am I putting myself into his category. The thought that I want to convey is a slightly more modern predicament that the metaphor of fighting may best explain.
So imagine if you will that in a boxing match, that some of the opponent’s punches gave you more energy. The object would no longer be just to avoid punches but also discern which ones were helpful and allow those to land. Despite the ridiculousness of this concept in terms of real boxing, it’s easy to see that the best boxers would be able to max their potential by taking positive hits and dodging the negative.
At the moment, you have millions of punches coming your way from a ton of “opponents”. Almost like a battle royal, your life has an absolute melee of people and organizations who are trying to punch you in the face with their opinion, product, idea or service. It’s not all bad but evaluating it all can be difficult. Here are some steps to help you from feeling punch drunk as you make it through your day.
- Avoid the Negative Corner – There are some places where you know that you’re going to be hit repeatedly by people who do not have your best interest in mind. There are billion dollar industries whose sole purpose is to distract your attention as often as possible and hit you with “BREAKING NEWS”. Just because it’s happening now, doesn’t mean that it is important or better yet that it is important to you. Your Twitter feed, e-mail, Facebook, TV, the gossipy coworker and others are not based on important, just recent.
- Pay Attention to the Source – Some sources will almost always be negative and others will almost always be positive. The amount of positive missed and negative endured from these consistent sources will be negligible. Keeping a default position of avoid all or accept all may be the best position to keep decision fatigue to a minimum. For those wild card sources, usually the most important question to consider is WHY? Why is this person taking a swing at me, to help or to hurt?
- Decide on the Power of the Punches – Since we’re dealing with information here and not actual physical contact, the amount of pain that you feel is dictated by you. So you can take the sting out of a punch by making it less significant. Our perspective often dictates our reality. For example, eyebrows are usually raised when I say that “Fear is a positive emotion”. People take it as solely negative but if they focus on the signal rather than the sensation, it becomes clear. Fear is sending a message to help protect you from some perceived threat. That system is there to help, not hurt you. Unfortunately many of us have our feelings on autopilot rather than recognizing the influence/control that we have over them.
So today as you brave the modern world and all of the jabs, hooks and sucker punches that it throws at you, remember that you’re not defenseless. The world does not have to knock you senseless. You can keep your wits about you and set up a system that protects you. After all, you’re fighting for your mental life. The only way that you get to control it is by keeping up the defense against those who are trying to take your control away.
So keep your guard up and only let in the hits that will help you.
When I was a kid, I was very explicit about the fact that I did not like pie. It’s really a shame too because from what I understand, my mother makes great apple and pumpkin pies. Regardless of how much I was missing out, I held firm to my identity as a non-pie eater. Then once at my grandmother’s house, she was getting ready to order a pizza pie and needed to know who wanted some. Despite my mother’s urging that I had eaten it before, I held fast to my pie-free stance. Once the pizzas arrived, my younger self realized the error of his ways. There were exceptions to my pie-free world that I needed to recognize and accept. This was not the absolute commandment that I originally thought that it was.
In 1998, Mark McGwire hit more home-runs than any other player in MLB history. I vividly remember watching the games to see if he would break Hank Aaron’s record and I’m not even a baseball fan. At the time, I remember becoming personally moved by the chase for the home-run record. It changed the way that I thought about several things in my life and it had nothing to do with home-runs but rather strikeouts. McGwire lead the league in home-runs that year but he was also near the top of the leader board for strikeouts. He struck out 2.2 times more than he hit home-runs. In theory, the strikeouts are failure but in reality they are three more pieces of data.
In 2002 my girlfriend (now wife) and I went to a Fleetwood Mac concert. We had a difficult time getting to the concert because she had a broken foot and was using crutches. The general admission parking was at least a half mile walk to the entrance, so I ended up carrying her on my back for much of the distance. As the diligent boyfriend, I wasn’t going to complain. However at the end of the show, she insisted that we try to get a ride back to the car from security. We were told to wait at the security station for the van to come pick us up. Alongside us was an irate woman and her boyfriend, that were also waiting to be picked up. Phrases like, “He can’t go out there!” and “This is ridiculous that we’re being treated this way!” were thrown about several times. It became evident to me that I was sitting next to Billy Corgan. Although the Smashing Pumpkins had broken up, I was still sitting next to a relatively important celebrity of the time. Despite my realization, I kept quiet until after we’d all been picked up by the van and he and his girlfriend had departed. At that point, I spilled the beans to everyone else in the van.
