Survive or Thrive?

The unfit die, the fit both live and thrive! -Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn (1876-1959), a poet associated with the American Naturalist literary movement; her autobiography was prefaced with an introduction by Robert Frost.

I remember when I was young talking to a friend of mine who had become a great tennis player! I had not seen him in a while and was amazed at how great he had become…we actually whacked the ball around in the street together…pretty funny scene playing tennis on a skinny Boston street….I could hardly catch up to his shots. He had top spin, under spin, power…the whole box of tricks! So while we were playing I said to him, “Jimmy, you’ve gotten so good at this you must just coast when you’re ahead?”…but his reply was both unexpected and unforgettable: “Nope, exactly the opposite…when I’m ahead, I hit it even harder and play like I’m way behind!”

If you’re any kind of a sports fan like I am, I’m sure you can remember your team or favorite player being ahead on points only to watch them fold like a tent and act like there was no possible way to win without becoming completely defensive. I can think of boxers running away in the last few rounds only to lose on the judges’ score cards after having crafted a masterpiece up to that point…or how about golfers imploding on the final holes!

But think about the real winners…they never seem to let up on the throttle! How about Tiger Woods…he never seems content unless he has decimated the field and even then he finds the flaws in his game or the holes in his boat! How about the image of the great Muhammad Ali standing over his opponents as they lay stretched out on the canvas with nothing left as he willed them back to life hoping for more of that victory!

You see that’s the true heart of a winner! Those people that thrive on struggle…the ones who really aren’t keeping score at all! When you look in their eyes you see nothing but pure focus! Time is irrelevant, pay-per-hour non existent, distractions…all muted! Listen to them describe those moments…”the basketball hoop seemed to be twice it’s normal size”…”the holes in the defense seemed big enough to drive a truck through”…”the golf hole just kept swallowing my ball!”

The biggest reason for this phenomenon is that they make little or no room for rationalization! “Well geez I just couldn’t beat the wind and rain today, I felt lethargic out there tonight, I just wasn’t on my game!” You see those are the words of the mere survivors and ‘also-rans’!

Somebody told me about a book that talks about survivors and who would be most likely to live through getting lost in the woods and it turns out to be children! What? Kids? With no training? Yes! Why? Because they thrive with no overload of rationalization! They’re too young to be dumbed down like adults! Our whole lives we are taught to merely survive…watch out for that car, don’t play in the street, chew your food you might choke, do your homework or you’ll never survive out there!

So here’s my new rally cry! Why don’t we step it up to THRIVE! Let’s start talking about all the great opportunities to grow! The challenge, I realize, is that you’ll have to crush the old “survivor’s mentality!” You know that safe place where you sit back and wait for the world to come to you and when it doesn’t you smack down some ‘happy pills’ to make survival bearable! How about that thought…survival is not even bearable! You know why? Because it’s not even remotely fulfilling!

Think about what a disastrous place the world would be if we were all just survivors!How about a long time ago when it was pretty cold out and we hid in caves hoping the snow wouldn’t kill us…until one of those survivors got a little dose of inspirational dissatisfaction and started banging some rocks together and stumbled into fire! How about the survivors that got sick and tired of riding horse back and figured out how to take a natural resource and put it in a contraption called an engine…do you even have the remotest idea how that works?

So what’s the point? We need more people to graduate from survivors to Thrivers…the boat feels lopsided these days…too many people running for the life boats and casting themselves upon a tumultuous sea of despair! Why can they do that…because they know that the Thrivers are hard at work…planning and scheming new ideas! Just look around you and see what’s new…technology expanding at the speed of light…new means of transportation on the work table!

But beware…you can’t keep waiting for other people to thrive to bail the rest of us out!(Read Ayn Rand’s classic Atlas Shrugged) We need to keep pushing down on the gas pedal! We need to realize that Thrivers are producers and without them we are all nowhere! We need to be cautious about becoming a world of redistribution by overburdening the Thrivers…I certainly believe in taking care of the widows, orphans and otherwise truly handicapped but NOT the lazy and the scared!

Now I know this might scare you and make you a bit angry but understand that is exactly my intent! I know you might point the finger and start to rationalize this argument away but please don’t! Reach deep inside yourself and turn that anger into personal inspiration! You have a powerful mind that just needs to be turned on so let it be! The hour is upon us! We must no longer be satisfied with simple survival…instead we must thrive! So as you face each day play the game like you are way behind…step up and swing at that ball as hard as you can…you just might find that zone where you join the ranks of the true Thrivers!