When you win so long, you forget the work and sacrifices that goes into winning
On losses, resentment and Muhammed Ali's story.
Heyy guys! How are you doing? I hope you are well! I’m doing quite alright although I had a quite busy week, and I suspect the next won’t be any different. Oh well.
The last time I wrote to you, I was going to say (or rant?) about a million different things but I somehow couldn’t. Now I can’t even remember any of those things anymore, and no I didn’t write them down either. Such is life. Now it’s 10:20pm and I’m about to continue what I started this morning, but my mind is on the food my mum prepared and the thousand and one things I have managed to push till next week. So I write this on an empty stomach, exhausted from all the work and walking I did today, and looking to complete and publish this before 12:00am. Well well, let’s see how this goesss
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If there’s one thing I love to do, it is listening to people I admire talk. I always want to know, what’s their thought process like? , how do they process their emotions? , what values do they live by? , In what lens do they see life? and the list goes on. So I watch interviews upon interviews, of them speaking. I listen to their podcasts if they have any. Read their autobiography if they have one. Trying to decipher how they live life —or if they are no longer alive— have lived life. One of those people, among many, is Muhammed Ali.
After watching a couple of his interviews, I decided to find out if he wrote any autobiography. I felt the only way to deeply understand the life he lived was if I read a book that he wrote about himself by his own self. His wins, his losses and how he interpreted and navigated them, the things that mattered the most to him, his personality, his lifestyle, his motivation, basically his life in its entirety.
So my read this week was The Greatest: My Own Story by Muhammed Ali. Muhammed Ali was a boxer, not just any, but a Heavy Weight Champion. He was the greatest that ever lived, and he never hesitated to call himself that whenever he had the chance.
In the first chapter of his book, he wrote about one of his major losses. This wasn’t just any loss but a loss to Ken Norton who was a ‘local boy’ at that time. He explained how Norton had hit him so hard he broke his jaw and took away the respect he had gained from people, but nowhere in the book did he mention resentment. In fact, he welcomed Norton to visit him at his hospital, took him for a tour in his gym and even gave him his special punching bag when he said he liked it. In his book he wrote “I’d started believing I couldn’t be whipped, that I didn’t have to work hard, train hard, discipline myself, dedicate myself in order to win. Now I know that too many easy victories can ruin a fighter as a long line of defeats. When you win so long, so much, you forget, you think your name will win. You forget the sacrifices, the work that goes into winning. Now I’m down, way down. They say I’m finished. They are celebrating. But I’ll come back.”
What stood out for me was how Muhammed Ali had a completely different mindset towards things. He was faced with many scenarios where resentment was the ‘right’ or easy thing to do, but he chose otherwise. In one of his interviews, he was asked how he felt when the government suspended him from boxing for 3 years because he wouldn’t join the army, he said “I didn’t hate them for what they did. To hate them would be simply hypocrisy, because I know they acted on what they thought was right. You don’t hate people for doing what they think is right”.
Muhammed Ali was not only a great boxer, he was intelligent and had a number of great personalities. Here is an interview I absolutely enjoyed that showed his courage, intelligence, great attitude, and most importantly his unmatched humor.
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Have a great week!
Yosola.
Wonderful read!
It's always great to read autobiographies of some of the all-time greats.
Whilst giving a first-hand account into the life of the person you are reading about, autobiographies give a better insight into how their experiences have shaped them as a person.
I enjoyed reading this. Thank youu