WHERE BECOMING A CHAMPION BEGINS (2/3)
We’ve been talking here the last couple weeks about what the process of becoming a champion looks like, how exactly we become the people winning requires us to be, and where that really important but really challenging work actually begins. Doing what champions do on the outside starts with doing some important work on the inside, with defeating our biggest and toughest opponent: ourselves. Becoming a champion starts with winning the battle within.
Two weeks ago we talked about the two competing voices battling for supremacy in our minds. One of those voices - what I call our inner champion - challenges and encourages us to become our best, and to do the hard work it takes to earn the success we say we’re after. The other voice - what I call our inner loser - is the voice in our head encouraging us to accept mediocrity from ourselves, encouraging us to take the easy way out in our moments of testing, and encouraging us to settle for something less than our best.
Last week we focused on why - even though we say we want to win - we so often end up allowing the voice of our inner loser to dictate our decisions and our behavior. The reason is because our inner loser doesn’t fight fair. When our moments of testing come, it’s always the first one to the fight. Our first instinct and our natural impulse is always to take the easy way out. That negative voice is also really loud. You’ve probably experienced that for yourself. It just won’t shut up. Finally, our inner loser is a liar. It’s a master manipulator, and its messaging is filled with empty promises and false accusations. It will say anything it has to say - even if it’s totally untrue - to keep you from doing what winning requires you to do.
If we don’t understand our inner loser’s plan of attack, it can be pretty easy for any of us to allow that voice to gain more and more control over how we think and ultimately what we decide to do. The more we allow our inner loser to go unchecked, the more power and authority we allow it to possess. In time, our inner loser becomes almost like a bully, using fear and intimidation to push us around and convince us that we were made for mediocrity, that we don’t have what it takes to win, and that we probably never will.
That’s why, if you want to win, you’ve got to be willing to fight. As a bully, your inner loser is counting on the fact that when it pushes, you’re gonna back down. You’re gonna wilt and wither and give in to its demands. But like most bullies, when you finally decide to push back - when you choose to engage and empower your inner champion - you realize it’s not as strong or as powerful as it wants you to believe.
That’s what’s happening every time you choose, in those moments of testing, to press pause and to move past your first instinct or your natural impulse. Every time you choose to do something you don’t feel like doing, not because it’s comfortable or convenient, but because you know it needs to be done. Every time you fight the urge to accept some comforting lie, and instead choose to search for and find the cold, hard, truth. Each one of those decisions engages and empowers your inner champion, and in doing so makes that winning decision a little bit easier for next time. The more you train that winning mindset, the better at it you get.
Ultimately, winning this battle - just like winning any battle - starts with your willingness to step in the arena and fight. That means taking those unhealthy and unproductive thoughts captive. It means calling out that fear, speaking truth to those lies, and in doing so exposing your inner loser for the fraud that it is. It means standing up to that bully, putting it in its place, and in doing so diminishing its power and authority over your decisions and your behavior. That’s how you engage and empower your winner within, and that’s where becoming a champion begins.
