Excerpt from Raising The Bar 

“Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.” —Marilyn Vos Savant

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School Days

It was a typical fall day. Leaves littered the ground, a cool breeze gently rattled through the trees, and billowing clouds sat high in a vast blue sky. The sun was weak, casting dappled light across the grass.

The school bell rang, marking the end of another day. I grabbed my jacket and lunch pail and found my usual spot in the back of the line. Released from our daily educational grind, I exited the back door with the rest of the kids. Today would be unlike any other day. I took the same path home as always. I walked the sidewalk from the school, then cut through a series of yards until I reached my own.

As I made my way into the first yard, I noticed a few kids from my neighborhood playing in one of the other yards a few houses up. This was the yard I needed to cut through to get home. I recognized two of these kids. They were both three years older than me. I had never seen the third one before.

Having been picked on and beaten up most of my childhood for being learning disabled, I was used to the teasing and name-calling from the two kids I knew, so I kept to my route and tried to cut through the yard where they were playing.

Head Down, Eyes Forward

As soon as I came into view, the name calling started. "Here comes retard boy.” “Look, there’s Tater Tot." I kept my head down and my eyes looking forward, the same way I’d done many times before.

It started with a tightness around my ankles. They’d tossed a tetherball rope around my shins, the same way cowboys do when they’re roping cattle. The ball whipped around my legs several times, coming to a stop only when I fell to the ground. I tried to pull myself to my knees, but they jerked the rope, causing me to fall flat, face-first in the grass. The battle had begun.

I tried to get up, but they pulled the rope and dragged me back down. The pulling and dragging were constant. It didn’t stop. I flopped around from my front to my back, trying to get my legs free of the ropes. As I fought, the other two kids jumped on me, kicking and punching me with all they had. I have no idea how long this went on, but there wasn’t a single spot on my body that hadn’t been punched or kicked.

I remember looking up and seeing other kids standing off to the side, laughing and pointing. Slam! Someone pressed my face firmly into the ground, hindering the scent of grass and mud that tried to fill my nostrils. Blood drained from my nose onto the grass, and a blue and white striped Puma tennis shoe kicked the side of my prone torso. There were cheers in the background. I tried to cover up, but the Puma raced toward me again, colliding with my nose this time. The taste of my own blood filled my mouth.

Then, something incredible happened. All the physical pain simply stopped. I told myself that there was no fucking way they’d see my pain. There was no fucking way they were going to know that they were hurting me. There was no fucking way I was going to let them have an ounce of satisfaction by showing them a single tear, or by uttering a single cry for help. I found contentment in the pain, and I embraced it. I anticipated the next punch and the next kick to see if they had the strength to hit and kick harder than they had the time before.

As I withdrew myself, they became increasingly dissatisfied with how things were going. The dragged me around the yard, hoping to spark a reaction from me. My face rolled through dog shit, but I wasn’t going to let them know that I was in any pain at all. All of it was held inside me, and it became my power.

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Blood, Sweat, and Grass

After what seemed to me like forever, they stopped. One of the onlookers came over and offered to help me up. I looked up at him with blood, sweat, grass and shit on my face, and told him to get the fuck away from me. I refused his help. I didn’t want his help to get up.

I pulled my knees to my chest and untied the rope from around my ankles. I rolled onto my side, first putting one knee on the ground and then the other. I placed one foot flat on the ground and pulled myself up. I stood with pride, knowing I’d displayed no pain and given satisfaction to nobody despite taking the worst beating of my life. The physical pain was intense, but I was able to displace myself and make it go away. The emotional pain, however, was a different story altogether.

Stop...Pause

I’m pausing at this point because I want you to think of some of the bad things that have happened in your life. For me, when I think about these things, I think of rage, vengeance, anger and hate. I can’t speak for you, but these are the emotions that come to my mind.

I hated those kids for what they’d done. I’ve never forgotten that day, and I never will. I used to think of it as the day the stupid learning disabled kid got what he deserved. They’d absolutely beaten the shit out of me, and it made me think about how helpless and worthless I was. I thought about how weak I was, and how I didn’t have the strength to fight back. I thought of the fear I felt every time I saw those kids again, and how afraid I was every time I walked past that house.

Take a moment right now to think back to one of the worst things that has ever happened in your life. Did someone close to you leave you for another? Were you cheated on or betrayed? Did you suffer the loss of a loved one? Were you beaten up like I was? Or worse?

We all have great pains that we suffer in our lives, and no one’s pain is greater or worse than anyone else’s. We all have our horrific moments, and we’d all love to know why they happened to us. Why me? What did I do to bring this on? We play the blame game, but we’ll never get any answers to our questions because there aren’t any. The answers we’re looking for aren’t found in the reasons why. They’re found in our own fears.

Most of us try not to think back on these times, because doing so scares the shit out of us. I’ll bet that when I asked you to think back, you didn’t, and if you did, you were emotionally detached. The pain we associate with these moments is usually just too much. However, some important questions need to be asked:

Is this pain influencing your life today? Could these events still be causing pain in your life? Or is this yet another issue you’re avoiding because you don’t want to know the answer? Are you guided by the way you think about these past experiences? If so, is it in a positive way? Or are these things holding you back from the life you really want? How could you know any of this if you’ve never thought about it? Maybe it’s time to revisit some of these moments from a different perspective so you can learn to overcome them.

Understand This

To do this, you have to understand one thing. The unfavorable, adverse, grim and hurtful losses in our lives shape who we become, and the excellent, fantastic and awesome times are the rewards we receive for being who we are. Confused?

We all have good times, and we all have bad times. They key is to understand how to use the bad times to help shape who you are in a positive way. This is far easier than most of us think it is, because it all really boils down to how we decide to look back on these events. I still have a hard time doing this sometimes, but I have yet to find one bad experience that didn’t yield a positive outcome. This includes even the very worst of my experiences. I’m able to see how each one has shaped who I’ve become in either a negative or positive way. The way events have affected me has always been based entirely upon how I recall them.

When I look back at these events and try to view them in a positive light, my life is always enhanced. Learning to remember them by viewing memories through a different prism feels like a weighted vest has been unbuckled and thrown from my body, to put things in training terms. By changing how I view things, my life has changed and I’m in a state of constant growth as a person.

When someone first suggested this, I thought it was bullshit. Shit happens and we have to deal with it, right? Sometimes we’ll never know why an event occurs. Sometimes we don’t need to know. I don’t know a single person who’s had a golden life without pain. We all have it, we’ve all had it, and we’ll all have more of it. This is life, so deal with it.

That’s what I would have said years ago, but what does “deal with it” actually mean? For me, it meant pushing it inside, filing it away as bad shit that happened, then moving on. Then I’d forget about it. But do we really forget? If you were hurt or scared as a result of something happening, would you do that something again? What if it didn’t yield the same result the second time around?

In powerlifting, missing a weight doesn’t mean it’s impossible to lift that weight if we try it again. If we still can’t lift it, we can try it again on another day. And if we still can’t lift it, we learn from it, get stronger, and come back to do it on yet another day. This is how a lifter looks at a challenge. The same is true for the negative events in our lives, except missed lifts won’t change how you look at life. They won’t shape who you’ll become the way a traumatic life experience can.

It’s easy to find positives in slightly negative situations that have little influence on who we’ll become. It’s another thing altogether to look at extreme situations in this same light. The process, however, is the same. It’s exactly the same. It all comes down to how you decide to look at it. I’m not saying this is easy, because it hasn’t been easy for me. It can take months or years to see positives, but I’m telling you that they’re there. And if you’re willing to look for them, you’ll find them.

Extraordinary Resolve

Face down on the ground, my entire body covered in grass, mud, shit and blood, I found something in myself that I didn’t have the day before. I found an extraordinary resolve, a drive and a will. I found the faith to become stronger, regardless of the situation. With my face in the mud, I found an iron will to not quit and to not give in, regardless of how many times I was kicked or hit. I found strength in myself that I’ve carried throughout my life. This strength has given me faith that no matter how bad situations get, or how hard I’m hit, kicked or abused, I will untie the ropes and pull myself back to my feet stronger than before.

That day, in a pile of shit, I discovered a piece of gold. Think about this. If I can turn shit into gold, what can you do?

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