Are you ready to reframe your perspective on pain and adversity? This episode of Unleashing Leadership will do just that. Guided by the words of NFL great Ray Lewis, we explore the transformative power of suffering on the path to success. Drawing a metaphor from the brutal, relentless hits experienced in the NFL, we ask you to consider life's setbacks as body shots in your own personal gauntlet.
Are you ready to reframe your perspective on pain and adversity? This episode of Unleashing Leadership will do just that. Guided by the words of NFL great Ray Lewis, we explore the transformative power of suffering on the path to success. Drawing a metaphor from the brutal, relentless hits experienced in the NFL, we ask you to consider life's setbacks as body shots in your own personal gauntlet.
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Speaker 1:
This is unleashing leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, and we just did the recap for, surrounded by ideas, we're about to get into the team interviews and before we do, we're going to see in which, in a YouTube video, one of the greatest speeches ever by Ray Lewis, put on by Motivation Hub. Ray Lewis, if you don't know, is a retired NFL linebacker. He's probably one of the greatest defensive players in NFL history. In his speech, he, you know, talks about success, and I can only say that the type of success he has has had in his life is a type that comes from overcoming the black pits of pain and suffering. And so his speech got me thinking and I wrote a little anecdote called the gauntlet.
Speaker 1:
So here it goes have you been hit? Are you afraid of being hit? Is it the pain from the strike or something else? Is it embarrassment, is it shame? Some people know what it feels like to be hit. They've lived it. Others don't, but they will. We are all going to get hit. There's nothing we can do to stop it. Whether it's figurative or literal, life is going to hit us and it's going to take everything that we have to not get knocked out because life doesn't care. It just goes on. People do what people do. They've been doing it long before us. They'll be doing it long after we're gone.
Speaker 1:
The question is what do you do when you get hit and you find out no one cares? Will you cry? Will you fold up? Will you hide? Will you quit? Will you become bitter? Will you become angry and destructive, or will you find strength? Will you learn about pain? Will you go beyond boundaries you didn't even know you had good? Will you let your pain make you stronger? When you decide that your pain does not make you a victim, then your pain does not have agency over you. That your pain is a reason, the reason you become unstoppable. Your pain is the reason you can change what otherwise would have been a broken person into someone who has a strength to walk through the gauntlet of life. And if you are going to achieve anything that is worth being remembered for, even if it is just an example to your children, the gauntlet is the only path. You can have a trophy if you want it. Everybody gets one these days. The problem is that it's not the trophy that says that you are greater worthy. It is making it to the other side of the gauntlet that does.
Speaker 1:
The difference between most of the people in this world who are too weak to walk the gauntlet, and the small minority of people who do, is effort and belief. The small minority have conviction that on the other side of the gauntlet there is something better, that they can make a difference if they can just get there. And so they start from one end and they work their way through. They take body shot after body shot, hit after hit, until the hits no longer hurt, until they seem like they were born in the gauntlet. And there is no instant gratification. It takes years or even decades of getting beaten and abused.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's what onlookers say happened. But in that small minority in the gauntlet, in their mind, they were just learning, they were adapting, they were growing, they were just dealing with the situation, the cards that they were dealt, they were just doing the only thing that made sense to them. They were moving forward and into the sunshine at the other end of the gauntlet, strong as steel hits, bouncing off success, seemingly attracted like a giant magnet, and everyone looks at them as if they were the lucky ones, the ones with all the gifts, if you want to be one of the lucky ones to be someone others look up to and want to be like. Someday, stop running from your pain. Pain is a gift. Fair or unfair doesn't matter. It's a gift. Embrace it and turn your pain into your reason.