Forget The Beat Down, Get The Beat Up
Forget the Beat Down,
Do the Beat Up!
Many people get caught up in the minutia of life’s trivialities. The stresses, the upsets, and the failures are too much for them. They take them to heart. They make them personal. They make the Beat Down part of their story, and even though they made it up, they believe it. And then they let it beat them down.
What’s a Beat Down?
It’s when you allow the assails and misfortunes of life and the failed pursuit of dreams get the better of you. When you allow the unpleasantness and misfortunes of tried and failed efforts to knock you to the ground. It’s when you unconsciously surrender your Gravitas to others’ wills or to the fears that dictate and dominate your life.
Beat Down.
The alternative all too many people miss is the Beat Up.
I get Beaten Up quite literally almost every day. Whenever something goes sideways, wrong ways, or no ways, I use it to propel myself further and higher. This is not hyperbole. This is actual mindset strategy I’ve been implementing daily for almost 50 years.
Imagine this:
You’re 5 years old. You suffer a debilitating and catastrophic fall. Suddenly, you emerge from a 57-day coma and you’re paralyzed, aphasic, and totally blind! This is not an imagination for me. It happened. It’s tried for decades to define me and my life, but it does not.
What would you do?
You deny the Beat Down, and you get Beat Up!
You find the positive energy flow to tap into in order to energize everything you do. You harness what’s right in the situation and you focus only on that. You ignore at all costs the constant barrage of Can’ts-Don’ts-Won’ts-Shouldn’ts and Wouldn’ts. You become deaf and blind to obstacles in your way. And you push as hard as you can for as long as it takes.
You become laser focused and you allow nothing to distract your objectives. Nothing diminishes your commitment and no one derails you from your bounty. It’s completely overwhelming and somewhat crazy- making, but what’s the alternative?
It’s called the Beat Up.
Who remembers the movie Rocky? Everyone, of course.
Rocky kept getting slammed. Loss after loss. Beat down after beat down.
But he drew out of himself the same champion spirit that’s within all of us. Only most of us take the beating and choose to stay on the mat or exit the ring when all too often it’s just as easy to get back into the fight and duke it out as it is to turn and quit, just like a Tasmanian Devil. But quitting is easy until you have to live with its ramifications.
Not everyone is a Tasmanian devil, viciously committed to success, and unwilling to relent to imposed circumstances. Some just don’t have what it takes. They’re not built that way. But most do have it within. Most can conjure the dynamics that create outstanding results. Most can, but most won’t.
What would have happened if Rocky Balboa had been knocked down by Apollo Creed and quit boxing? Or if he’d let Clubber Lang take and keep what was his? He’d be smacking frozen meat and regretting every moment of his life. Also, there never would have been the unforgettable and Oscar-overlooked “Rocky 31, Rocky’s Bones Decay.”
My coach Mike Weeks (Frontofmind.com) says it this way:
“It doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down as long as you keep getting up!”
And that’s the key to the Beat Up. It’s all about increasing the wind over the wing to increase altitude. It’s all about putting more and more wind in your sail and riding the wave for as long as you can hold on to the board.
It’s all about what you decide what your life is and will be about.
No one else decides.
This sounds like easy peasy. It’s not. And neither is life. But the only way you get to have it all is if you take the Beat Up. Will you rise above all adversity and resist all soul crushing defeats? Can you do as Maya Angelou poetically penned? “Still I Rise.”
The count is on and it’s your turn.
Now go beat up someone and help them rise, too.
Michael J. Herman is a Professional Writer, Motivational speaker, and Coach. His clarion call has always been “You Can Do It!”™