Refuse to lose.
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Sounds a little cheesy, doesn't it? It should, in a way; it's the kind of thing someone would print on a bracelet or a T-shirt. And it does reside on one of the many bracelets I wear on my wrist.
Given their esteemed position, these words mean quite a bit to me. They were formed during my football season senior year of high school as a way to keep the team positive during a game. We definitely needed the boost—before my senior season, we'd had had three losing seasons. Freshman year, we had won four games and lost six (4-6), sophomore year we were 1-9, and junior year we were 2-8. We made the bracelets before the senior season, and I think they did something to prepare us for our first game, at the very least. By the end of the season, we were 7-3. Nothing to go crazy about, but for us, it was the best thing ever.
Senior year came and went, but I continued to wear the bracelet. Something about the phrase really stuck with me and made me smile, but I wasn't exactly sure what it was. I would wear the bracelet proudly, people from high school would ask me with astonished faces why I continued to wear the bracelet and I never had a real answer prepared. Always a simple, "Oh, just because."
Fast forward to second-semester sophomore year in college, though, and I was faced with the first real critic of the phrase: the girl I was seeing at the time. She asked me why I wore the bracelet, and my answer, unsurprisingly, did not impress her. She responded with, "Well, that seems silly. It was high school. Why do you continue to wear it?" It was the first real time I had ever been challenged about the phrase, so I did what anyone does whenever they aren't sure how to answer a question.
I spit out pure horse $%!&.
It was the best I could do, at the time at least. I didn't want to look like a complete idiot. Later, however, it made me ask myself the same question. Why was I wearing the bracelet? Surprisingly, my answer didn't end up being all that different from the answer I gave her, but it was grounded in much more thought. The words could easily reach beyond the football field, and I immediately wanted to apply the words to my actual life.
I think the words are incredibly valuable, and I also believe that not as many people adhere to them as they should. See, you can't deny reality: sometimes, you just don't win. If we lost the football game, we lost the football game. If you lose a job, you lose a job. If that three-year relationship ends, you can't deny it ended.
What you can do, however, is choose to not be completely defeated by any setback in life, no matter how large or how little. It's not easy. I'm struggling with it right now, at MIT. I feel like if I could just leave and go try my hand at acting, I would instantly become successful.
First of all: no.
Second of all: that isn't healthy in any sense. You can dream and work toward those goals, but you should never drop your current situation and neglect your current needs because of your belief in where you would be if you were just doing something else. That's the optimism for something you've imagined, something you can't even prove, and I think that it can be dangerous to dwell too much on what you're not doing.
Sure, work toward those goals, but take what you have now for everything it is. Find the positive in everything. Life will continually beat you down, whether with failure, criticism or simply the want for something more, but you can't give in to that. You have to take something positive away from every experience you have or you will quickly become upset about your situation. At first, that may not seem like a problem, but the frustration will build on itself until you are drowning in a thick mass of negativity.
I discovered this attitude in myself recently. But then I asked myself: So what if what I'm doing now isn't what I want in the end? It is what is happening now, and I'm going to stick with it, so I'm going to make it work. Otherwise, I can say hello to my sad, defeated self of three months ago, longing to be able to audition for Han Solo for the upcoming standalone "Star Wars" film.
I can't make this stuff up.
I can't be upset that I couldn't audition. I can't be upset at the "what ifs," especially ones that revolve around something as subjective and uncertain as snagging a role. I can't be upset at MIT and think of it as a road block to my acting career, because it isn't.
It has helped me discover who I am and what I want to do, at least for the next few years in my life, and it has shown me that I have to take steps to figure out how to get where I want to be.
It has shown me that I need to learn what it means to be an actor in the same way I have learned what it means to be an engineer.
It gave me wonderful friends that will help me through anything, and it showed me that I have the tools to face whatever challenges come my way.
It was a necessary stepping stone in my life, one that I can't grow tired of. I need to gain every lesson I can from it while simultaneously taking the necessary steps to lay the foundation for my acting career.
Maybe I have this mindset because of my upbringing, but I don't think it is a bad quality. In fact, it is something I'm very happy to have. I never completely lose at anything in life. Can I be beaten to within an inch of it? Sure. But by forcing myself to find a silver lining, I can never feel totally defeated. I can keep getting knocked down, but I'll never stay down. I will always keep moving forward, especially if the knock down occurs while I'm pushing myself beyond my limits.
Refuse to lose. Bottom line. Find the positives; take them from every experience life gives you, especially when it knocks you down, and keep moving forward.
Again, this is an extension of my vlog, and that video can be seen through the link below and/or at the top of this article.
Next week we talk will talk about my philosophy of reaching for the stars, the second of three installments which is going into a unit on optimism.
Thanks guys, and have a great week!
Watch the vlog @ https://www.youtube.com/embed/vifi1isXtk0
The music in the video was not made by me but instead by someone of far greater musical talents. Those are:
"Dub Trubble" by Silent Partner
and
"Go Cart" (Electronic Medium) by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1300006
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
All rights go to the artists.
