As human beings, we witness all manner of striving, aching, seeking, overcoming, and achieving. But what we can all recognize is having what I call a ‘fighter spirit’, who is driven to face life’s challenges with and amongst others, for better or worse.
A fighter spirit — the quality that enables you to surpass and transcend the challenges in your world. The immediate response, aside from stubbornness, was that this attitude was not about having a hundred good things in your life. If you consider that you have only one bad thing in your life, then all the other things you have are not of significance. So who you really are depends on how you respond to that bad thing.
Persevere even when hurt
If you ask most people about pain, they’ll tell you that it stops them from doing what needs to get done. A sharp physical or emotional discomfort can take over a person’s sensations, overwhelming their thinking and actions. For the fighter spirit, this isn’t the case. Even when this person feels pain, he or she does not become completely overwhelmed, but instead learns to de-centre that pain, making it an additional source of power rather than weakness; to see pain as a necessary constraint in the path to greatness.
Think of the entrepreneur who attempts to rise from the ashes of a spectacular business failure after others have written off his total bankruptcy. The truly tenacious use their pain as fuel.
Navigation of success and happiness
“This myth that you don’t need a warrior spirit until you go through the hard times is kind of… actually, that’s the easiest part. After you emerge from the hard times, it is much easier to get back to the status quo or normal than to stay on task and keep the discipline throughout the good times.” Thriving requires staying awake during times of success, not falling asleep with a feeling of euphoric entitlement. Yet euphoria masks the need to soldier on. ‘We rest under the laurels,’ explains Churchill. That’s when the warrior spirit keeps on.
They know that success is not something you reach one day: you keep moving and seize new opportunities to develop.
The tale of the comeback kid involves sticking with a conviction through thick and thin, never giving up or going away. Harry Potter author JK Rowling endured numerous rejections before the books were published worldwide. She is now rich and famous, but after her marriage failed, as a single mother of one-year-old daughter living on welfare benefits, Rowling simply couldn’t go on without writing. She literally couldn’t afford it.
And yet the fighting spirit doesn’t belong only to famous people, either. It resides in the everyday hero:
The person who quietly and without fanfare overcomes.
a tough single parent who bounces from job to job, working long hours to make a living for their kids. The student who confronts their difficulties as they struggle through school is determined to break the cycle of poverty and attain an education. The patient whose illness consumes them but who fights through it battles with the force of Cassius Clay on a heavy bag.
Cultivating a fighter spirit involves developing certain key traits:
- resilience
- adaptability,
- and an unwavering belief in oneself
Through resilience, individuals are able to nimbly rebound from setbacks that they see not as conclusions but as opportunities for self-improvement; through adaptability, they are prepared for the shifting arts of living that demand strategy and tactics that need to change; and, ultimately, through an irrepressible sense of self-belief, that all else flows from.
Cheers to everyone who is a fighter, including you
