Inspirational Stories from the World of Sports and a Never Give Up Attitude
Sports and business are similar in many regards. Both are done by extremely hard working people following their dreams and a lot of businesspeople and athletes have a never give up attitude. We can find as many inspirational stories from the world of business as we can from the world of sports. The kind of stories where a person was turned away hundreds of times until finally they hit it big after one person believed in them. It seems the one thing separating mediocre athletes from the truly great ones is a sense of never giving up and always trying no matter what the odds are.
When people fail, it is only a very select few who will get back up, dust themselves off and try again. Most of those who taste defeat will be content to wallow in self pity and stay confined to their failures. It takes a special sort of person to keep getting up and trying again. Even those that fail and get up again will usually give up after the second failure. The world abounds with examples of stories of people who never gave up and achieved greatness in the end. Walt Disney was fired from a job by a newspaper editor because of a lack of ideas, Einstein was thrown out of university and his Ph.D. dissertation was rubbished by the University of Bern and Fred Astaire’s first screen test was a disaster with the testing director saying he could not act and could not sing but could dance a little. We can find the same stories in the world of sports; Babe Ruth, who is considered one of the greatest baseball players ever and who held the home run record ad also held the strikeout record. When the American Football player Herschel Walker was in high school and wanted to play football, his coach said he was too small. Walker did not listen to his coach and trained extremely hard and went on to win a Heisman trophy. These people have that elusive never give up attitude that is sometimes so vital in becoming great.
It is interesting when we look at good athletes and great athletes. The difference between the two might seem insignificant, but on closer inspection we can find a few subtle differences. Yes, all good athletes are very talented and they have skills and qualities which make them reach the top of their chosen game, but great athletes seem to live the game. They do not require any sort of extra motivation to get going or to keep practising. They are always looking to improve themselves and make their game better. They have an inbuilt never give up attitude that others just do not have. It might be that they do not even know how to give up. This quality of theirs gives them the edge over others in their field. The likes of Michael Jordan or Lance Armstrong, these athletes trained as if their lives depended on it and they failed but got right back up and improved themselves in order not to fail again.
Out of the five top habits of great athletes; commitment, self-knowledge, experimentation, incredible tenacity and great coaching; tenacity is one of the most important. Although all the others are very important as well, it is this one factor that is the glue in the whole equation. Top athletes just keep on giving it their all; they come out during matches looking to win and never looking to lose. The tenacity that these types of athletes have shows up in the examples of Lance Armstrong, O.J. Simpson and George St. Pierre. Lance Armstrong is a testament to the never give up attitude. Having survived cancer to win the Tour De France a record seven times, the man is a living legend in the world of cycling. O.J. had rickets in his legs and had to wear leg braces as a child only to grow up to become the top NFL player during his time. George St. Pierre was at the height of his career in the UFC when he was beaten. He came back from that defeat to rule over the welterweight division. This just shows us that some of the people who really succeed in life do so by accepting failure and rising to conquer it.
We can all learn something from these stories and the attitude that top athletes display. If we all show a never give up, never-say-die attitude in our lives, we might find ourselves at the top of our chosen field in no time at all. All it takes is a little inspiration and a whole lot of tenacity.
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