Some of the motivational sayings that I came up with were inspired by my involvement in martial arts. Although martial arts may have been behind the inspiration of these quotes, the quotes themselves can be applied to day to day life.
For example, one of the motivational sayings used in my book, ‘The Life Champion In You‘ as well as on the back of my new business card (pictured below again), was in fact inspired by my years in martial arts competition.
This quote is repeated as shown below;
“Our biggest competition is never the others. Instead, it is always ourselves. It doesn’t matter if we end up with first or last place. If we do our best to do better than before, then we’ve won.”
Sometimes when I went to karate tournaments, I would see certain competitors in my division. Some of these guys were my biggest competition and having them around could indeed have a psychological effect on the other competitors even before the competition started!
Also, in all my years of competition in martial arts (I started competing back in 1985), I have placed first, second, third and even last place in my division as well as all other places in between. Although it’s very satisfying to win first place each time, I found out an interesting pattern over the years.
I actually learn more when I don’t win first place. That is, whenever I don’t win top prize, I go home and tweek my competition forms, modify my training a bit and do some other adjustments. I also train harder. The end result is that I always end up with a better and superior competition form as a result of this extra work. If I won first place, I probably wouldn’t change anything until the next time I don’t win first place!
The thing is that as a result of not winning first place, the extra efforts that come from post tournament training always enables me to become better. Therefore after much thought about my long competition career, I’ve come to realize a very important principle that inspired a few original motivational sayings of my own.
I’ve come to realize that my biggest competition is in fact not the next person in my divisions. Instead it is me. If I strive to do better than the last performance, no matter what official place I end up with, then I’ve already won.
This of course can be applied to other areas of life which I will expand on for a future issue of my monthly newsletter where I present motivational sayings and break them down to apply them to day to day life (see the blog side bar or Free Stuff tab of my Facebook page to sign up).
