Competing in life and leadership requires two things: grit and the ability to show up. These two things not only help us win the day, but more importantly compete for the hearts of those we are entrusted to lead.
Competing
I write this post on the airplane back from Fargo, North Dakota. My son, Grant, just competed in the Fargo Nationals. It is one of the toughest and most prestigious high school wrestling tournaments in the nation. It is stacked with elite competition.
He has trained all summer long to prepare for the moment, strength training, two a day practices, and meticulously managing his nutrition. Grant has worked extremely hard so that he could compete at the highest level.
We arrived in Fargo on Wednesday. Wrestling does require making weight, so the first two days were fairly uneventful. He trained with Team Georgia both days and utilized the remaining time for rest until he made weight Thursday evening.
Friday, wrestling started. Our travel arrangements had us scheduled to depart on Sunday. Here are two takeaways from our five days in Fargo:
Competing Requires Grit
Unfortunately, the tournament didn’t go his way. After losing his first match, he faced elimination in his second match.
The match didn’t start well, and he got down big early, but he kept competing. He showed grit and fought his way back. He closed the gap to within one point in the closing seconds of the match and ran out of time.
His tournament ended much earlier than he wanted, but showed tremendous grit in the process. He could have easily given up when the score seemed insurmountable and chose not to.
Competing in life and leadership demands grit. The daily grind can often leave us feeling behind on the scoreboard. There are only two choices we have when things get tough…to give up or show grit.
Gritty People continue to grind. In the face of setbacks, they are constantly working to position themselves for a comeback. Grit positions us to compete.
Show Up
Grant was pretty dejected after his loss, and I completely understood. When you put that much effort into preparing to compete and come up short, it’s a hard pill to swallow.
I generally try to give him his space after a loss until he is ready to talk. When the time was right, I offered him some encouragement…“At least you showed up.”
Grant will be a senior next season. He finished second in the state as a Junior. His goal is to win State next year. There are a lot of kids in the State of Georgia that share that goal, but they didn’t show up this past weekend. Not only that, they didn’t show up to the weeks of intense preparation that it took to compete.
Grant showed up on days he was tired, days his body was banged up, and days he just simply didn’t want to. Showing up will be a difference maker next February for Grant.
The old saying goes, “Showing up is half the battle.” I have to disagree…it’s most of the battle. It’s the place where every day starts.
There are days that it can be hard to show up in life and leadership. The days when that inner voice tells us that we can’t handle our past, present, or future circumstances.
Whether it’s failure, discouragement, or exhaustion…we must keep showing up. It requires a tremendous amount of resilience, but the strongest people in this world continue to show up…despite the circumstances.
These people have an innate ability to get out of the bed, place their feet firmly on the floor, and put one foot in front of the other. No matter what lies ahead, no matter how hard it is, they show up and compete. They may not always win the day, but their ability and willingness to compete never lacks.
Conclusion
There are those moments when someone speaks into our world and it sticks. Before we left for the trip, one of those special people in my world shared a nugget of wisdom with me. He told me about a book that he read one time that asked the question, “How do you spell LOVE? The answer…TIME.”
So here we were, it’s only Friday, he’s out of the tournament, and we don’t leave until Sunday. Fargo was a great place, but we had pretty much seen all it had to offer.
I decided to compete. We rented a car, got up at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday and drove clear across North Dakota to experience Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The two of us knocked out the North section, South section, and got to experience the brand-new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.
We saw Bison up close, watched Prairie Dogs in their element, captured spectacular scenic views, and learned about the 26th President of the United States. We listened to music, laughed, and talked the entire time. We even pulled off the interstate onto some random dirt road to catch the sun setting over the plains.
We rolled back into the hotel at 12:30 a.m., nineteen straight hours and 832 miles of road tripping! That Volkswagen Jetta will never be the same! I promise!
It’s hard to compete with an adventure like this. On this trip, LOVE was spelled with TIME. It created Unexpected Moments and Unforgettable Memories.
When competing in life and leadership gets tough, get gritty and keep showing up. Compete for those that matter, compete for their time, and win their hearts.
