Matt Coddington
MDI Contributor
The boxer kept getting punched and knocked down but kept getting up. He didn’t give up. He refused to give up even though it was hard and he felt that he couldn’t take any more punches to the body and to the face. Eventually he sustained what he thought was the final blow. Stay down. Stay down. It’s over. Accept it.
His trainer and team believed in him even when his belief in himself was struggling as he was lying on the mat, bloodied and bruised, thinking that he couldn’t go on. They yelled above the crowd but they couldn’t help him unless he got up himself and found his way to his corner. He had to make his way on his own.
After the bell rang and the round was over, he got up and stumbled his way to the stool and his corner of the ring and made his way into the arms of his trainer and his training team. They poured water on his head, put balm on his cuts, and told him that he could keep going. He wasn’t down yet. There was still fight left in him. He could win.
But was winning the outer fight the real match? What if the real match was within the boxer, within himself? Are you a boxer? You have to be, and it’s tough. Do you know that your biggest opponent is within yourself? That’s who you’re up against.
That’s the hardest fight any of us will ever wage. None of us punch as hard as the opponent within ourselves and that motherfucker is relentless until we rely upon our trainer and training team when we stumble into our corner and onto our stool between rounds with blood streaming down our faces and bruised ribs in the boxing ring of life.
It’s not about how hard you’re hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. That’s why we have a mentor, a men’s team, and a division behind us.
Well said