Life Lessons From a Muay Thai World Champion

January 31, 2014

Intro

Again, another tangent post. I thought I’d share what I heard tonight from my Muay Thai instructor.

Three People Getting Into a Ring

Essentially he started by saying that we were concentrating too much on ourselves and not on our opponents. He then said something that could be presented as an analogy (which I’m going to do in this case):

“If you keep beating yourself up over the mistakes you’ve made in the past you’re going to walk into a ring fighting two people. The person you’re fighting and yourself. For every time the other guy knocks you one, you mine as well backup and feed one to yourself since that’s what you’re doing psychologically.”

This is paraphrased but you get the point. This can not only be applied to martial arts but also other aspects of life. Imagine you walked into every security engagement, job interview, presentation and any other stressful situation with not only the opponent that you’re up against but also yourself. Loathing, mistrust, angst, hatred and all other emotions that you can possible apply against yourself are only going cause harm.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t learn from your failures and I can’t emphasize that enough. I really enjoyed the talk that Adam Savage from Myth Busters did at Defcon 17, which you can find here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1825zkmJVuE. My main point is that dwelling on the past can be harmful to many aspects of your life. Including the fights that you’ll continue to face each and every day.

There’s a rant for you. Thanks for reading!