During a martial arts endurance/spirit test, a student of mine had to step out and take a knee.
He was only out and recovering for a minute or two and then came back and finished the test performing the best he could.
The next morning, I got a text from him saying that he never slept that night. That he stared at the ceiling enraged at his performance. And that he kept replaying the situation over and over again.
Shortly after receiving that text, as I was doing my daily quote curating for MMQ, I just so happened to stumble upon a line that I felt was meant for his eyes that just so happened to turn up in front of mine. It was: “Stay open to the wisdom of anger.”
And this is exactly what I based my reply off of.
I said, “There are no bad emotions. Only signals from inside hinting to you how you might move forward. Beating yourself up and punishing yourself isn’t going to do that. There is a wisdom in this anger that’s waiting to be tapped into. Channel it. Focus it. And use it as rocket fuel to help you take your next steps.”
Ultimately, the point of an endurance/spirit test isn’t to push yourself until you pass out. It’s to expose you to something really hard so that you’re forced to look into the mirror at your inner self.
…Because easy never gets you past superficial. It’s only when you push towards those outer limits—physically and mentally—that you get to see what you’re really made of… and can then (and only then) start to do something about it.