If you are reading this, you have never experienced anything like coronavirus. This is your first time to experience a virus of pandemic proportions. Welcome to the world.
Our lives have been disrupted.
What many people thought they could never do without; coronavirus has taken away. What people thought they could never do; coronavirus has made them do it. For the first time in the history of mankind, anyone with children has had to live with them for more than a week!
- So what was your life growing up?
- Who are you?
- Which schools did you attend?
- Which games did you play?
- Did you attend day school or boarding school?
- Were your parents well-off, or you had to struggle to find something to eat?
- What lessons did you learn during your teen years?
- Many times we are too busy to sit down and reflect.
- What life lessons did your parents teach you? Did you get anything you wanted easily?
You must train your mind so that it hardens and get prepared for tough times. It is not a good idea to give your mind easy way outs, that way, you will keep running away from tough things. This is not about not choosing your battles. No. Far from it. This is about making your mind prepared for any situation that you have no way from confronting. It is like a home invasion. However, an easy way out you might need, if the war is brought into your sitting room, you must confront it. How you handle it depends on your training. But you have no way out.
Mohamad Ali, the greatest boxing champion of all time said, he would “start counting his press-ups only at a point he had done many and was starting to feel tired.” He could not waste his time counting before first getting tired.
He trained his mind to be comfortable with pain. Indeed, while in the ring he would only protect the head, and let the jabs land on other body parts because he had hardened them to not feel ‘basic’ pain.
Indeed all sportsmen of our time, spend more time in practice and preparation. What you see in the final competition is nothing. As an executive coach, I have seen how leaders spend a lot of time crafting their presentations and practicing it. The real presentation takes over 18 minutes, but the time taken to prepare for the 18 minutes talk takes over months of preparation! It is called hardening the body, mind, and soul.
So, what lessons did you learn growing up? How are you teaching your children and relatives to focus and harden their minds for tough times ahead?
The world is not for easy people. It is not predictable. Tomorrow will be completely different. You must prepare today by expecting the worst. When you get your mind used to an easy life, and you find a tough life you easily give up.
When you find a tough exam, you jump out. When the job is tough, you jump out. When the competition is intense, you jump out. When the marriage is difficult, you jump out. When the responsibility is tough, you jump out. You cannot live your entire life running away from challenges because you will lack the critical lessons needed to win.
Who are you? How are you preparing your mind to harden so that you can have the staying power to confront any challenges? Many times, tough things make us better.
Copyright Mustapha B Mugisa, 2020. All rights reserved.
