These Guys Are the Perfect Model For Overcoming Setbacks
Hey! I hope you’re having a great day!
I’m pretty excited today. As you may or may not know I am a pretty big sports fan, especially when it comes to following teams from my hometown Kansas City Missouri.
With the Kansas City Royals winning the World Series this year it was already an amazing year for KC sports fans, but yesterday we got yet another jolt when our beloved Kansas City Chiefs won their first NFL playoff game in 22 years (which was the year I moved to Florida coincidentally).
If you follow or play sports enough, one of the things you realize is that it is one of the most dramatic displays of not just physical ability but of mental toughness. Teams and individuals often have to overcome major hurdles in order to win and they must stay mentally engaged, confident and motivated despite setbacks, injuries, losses and other challenges. This to me is the “story behind the game” that makes sports so fascinating.
This is no more true than with the Kansas City Chiefs this year. The Chiefs, like most NFL teams had lofty goals when beginning the season- they wanted to win their division, their conference and the Super Bowl.
They came out swinging in week number one when they came away with a great victory against the Houston Texans. After this many thought it would be a good year for KC.
Then they encountered some pretty big challenges…
They proceeded to lose their next five games in a row to take their record to 1-5.
Now I don’t know about you but if I had an early success during the year and then five straight weeks of defeat, I’d be tempted to get pretty discouraged. I may even be tempted to resign myself to thinking “this year is going to be bad.”
However that is not what the Chiefs did.
They went on to win their next 10 regular season games and then won yesterday 30-0 to advance to round 2 of the playoffs.
They showed tremendous mental toughness to deal with all those losses, all those setbacks, all those “reasons” to believe this wouldn’t be their year and they came out fighting each and every week to allow them to finish the season strong.
Now although I love talking about how great my team is, I bring this up not to brag on them but to illustrate something that we all need to remember when going after our own lofty health and life goals- don’t let failures or setbacks derail you.
After 10 days have gone by in the new year, many people have already experienced what the Chiefs experienced. We came out of the gate super motivated, followed the diet, did the exercise, stayed on track and in essence “got the win.” Then although we had good intentions we let life get in the way and we day by day started to fall off track and in essence “lose the game.”
Most people give up at this point. Did you know that statistically if you miss 5-6 days of exercise or go off a diet for 5-6 days the likelihood of you getting back to it is very minimal? This shows the mental toughness that average people have when dealing with setbacks while trying to pursue their goals. Heck, I see it already at the gym that I work out at almost every morning, attendance has already declined significantly since New Years Day.
All of us will reach a point during our journey where we will be tempted to just quit. We will convince ourselves that it’s not worth it, it’s never going to happen, it’s too much trouble or too aggravating, that we’re just “too old”, that we don’t have the discipline and dozens of other garbage excuses our brain will give us that will try to derail us into submission.
Don’t give in to it. Keep going. Keep fighting. If and when you do this you will eventually reach a point where you can look back and not only be proud of the results you got and the work you put in, but you will be proud of all that you will have overcame to get there and you will see yourself as a winner and not a loser.
Plus you’ll have a pretty cool story to go with it. 😉
To your best year ever!
Chris Vercelli MATm, RTS, CPT
Founder: Non-Fiction Fitness