Failure to focus

No matter if you are a boxing fan or not, this past weekend provided a bit of controversy for the sports world to debate after the championship bout between the defending champion Victor Ortiz and the challenger Floyd Mayweather ended in an "unorthodox" manner to say the least.  While the sports world is destined to debate the ethics of sportsmanship and whether or not this outcome is legitimate, the point of it all is that failure to focus can and will cost you.

In brief, the controversy arises because Floyd Mayweather knocked out Victor Ortiz after the referee broke the two apart to deduct a point from Ortiz' scorecard for head butting. After the referee resumed the fight, Ortiz' then put his guard down in an apologetic stance as to say "sorry for intentionally ramming my forehead into your head...let's continue the fight from here on out like gentlemen." To Ortiz' surprise, Mayweather took the  opportunity to knock-out the apologetic Ortiz'.  I know I am overstating the obvious when I suggest that whenever you are in a ring with an opponent that is getting paid a high-dollar figure to knock your head off, you should always be on guard. Just because you are the champion going into the ring doesn't mean you are privileged with an alternative set of competitive rules that allow you to decide the tempo of the competition. The name of the game is to knock the opponent out from the time the bell rings to begin the round, all the way until the bell rings to end it.

There are moments in all of our life that we begin to rely on a rhythm of life instead of a focused savory of the existence that we occupy. When this happens, we fall into the tyranny of the ego-centric mindset and tend to interpret the world around us based on our emotions and relative agenda instead of applying due diligence to the factual circumstances we function in. While it's all of our hope to consistently succeed in whatever we put our minds to, the confidence that can come from previous victories doesn't privilege us with the excuse to cruise forward to the next perpetual success. This is the failure to focus that Victor Ortiz fell victim to last Saturday. For us, we should grow our capacity for greater achievements and responsibility from our successes, but never lose the fundamental focus and hunger that  fueled our journey in the first place. Without this fundamental focus, we are destined to grow complacent, eventually falling victim to a self-serving misconception that could cost us more than we ever imagined.

Win Today!

Victor

Never again...And this time I mean it!

    Looking back on our lives we can see moments where we wished we had acted differently.   Prior to those occurrences we had the best of intentions, and perhaps even boasted of how we were going to respond to a situation the next time it came up. The cost of such impulsive behavior can range from a dent in a relationship due to another flippant slip of the tongue, or to a car crash in life due to the loss of momentary intellect and impulsive instinct took over.  Perhaps we have grown from those instances if we have taken the intentional preparations for the next happen chance. Or, like most, we just think we will act differently the next time since we didn't like the pain of the previous experience. Until then, we will keep living in our self-serving kingdom of perceived reality, because as the pain diminishes, and a new normal arises, we soon revert to our old selves. Unless you are one of the rare flawless in life, we can tend to over-estimate the reactive selves that we are when it comes to future fore-casted events.