Failure will happen if you will live your life. But how many times can a person fail? It doesn’t matter how many times one fails, what MATTERS is how many times someone had the chance to quit and he didn’t, because winners make the most errors as they NEVER quit. Bearing that in mind, here are some prime examples of the above statement:
1. 4 Years of struggle, 4 Years of agonizing defeats against Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal before Novak Djokovic finally became World No. 1 in tennis. Conversely, 5 years of constant anguish, pain of living under the curse of not living up to his potential hung around his name and one life changing tragedy is what made Roger Federer the player he is today.
Djokovic and Federer at Wimbledon, 2012
2. Rejection from the high school basketball team, working hard daily to prove everyone wrong, becoming famous and then struggling and failing in the baseball minor League before appreciating what he had in reality is the story of the greatest basketball player ever- Michael Jordan.
One of the greatest basketball players of all time-Michael Jordan
3. From a ticket collector in Indian Railways to cycling around the town of Kharagpur to playing with tennis balls on cricket grounds, no one who had played with Mahendra Singh Dhoni even had the slightest idea that the lad from a small town of India will go on to become the best Indian Captain ever.
One of the finest captains of the India cricket team-M S Dhoni
4. Nobody gets up 6 am in the morning to play ball, But Ernie DiGregorio did and at twelve years of age,he started practicing 9-10 hours a day by himself. They could have cut his right hand off and he would have played one handed.That is why in-spite of his physical limitations: small height, chunky, slow with short arms, chubby fingers and no jumping ability – he still became NBA rookie of the year.
Ernie DiGregorio became rookie of the year despite physical limitations
There are many examples like this all around not only in the field of sports but everywhere with people who have struggled early in on their career before going on to become the best in their field. Contrary to the popular belief that the great people have had an easy life and how each and every one of us wished to be lucky enough like them and become great like our favorite sports person, the above examples are just to show the opposite. Nobody has an easy life, not even the greats themselves. They have struggles just like a normal human being, each and every day of their lives. Struggle is an inevitable part of life and it will be foolish to escape from its clutches because it is these struggles which can make you great or break you in pieces.
So what is it that separates these great ones from normal human beings? It is the ability to get back up again when they have failed. Life will knock us down but we can always choose whether or not to get up again and strive towards the goals with double intensity. Failure and Struggle will always be there in every journey. In the words of JK Rowling: “You might never fail on the scale I did. But it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”
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This article was published at http://sports365blog.com/2013/02/25/from-m-s-dhoni-to-roger-federer/