How a 2012 Facebook Message taught me 8 lessons for business and life.

9 years ago I received the below message that helped shape the values I try to go by today. Every year I get a reminder to read it and remind myself of those values.

For context, this message came shortly after my last MMA fight (the right hand picture) however to fully explain why it’s so important I have to go 4 months further back to the fight before and what was my first and only loss.

Prior to this loss, I was riding a high wave, successful and confident in my own abilities with a good record and coming off of the back of a great fight in Jersey. I had a lot of people in my ears, pumping me up and thought I was unbeatable.

As a striker taking on a champion grappler, my game plan was to stay on the feet, pick him apart with strikes and finish the fight early. After dominating for the majority of the first round, following the game plan, hubris got the better of me and when the fight hit the floor, rather than stand up, I could finish on the mat… I was choked out 30 seconds later

Lesson 1: Pride always proceeds the crash - The bigger the ego, the harder the fall

Devastated couldn’t describe how I felt, in my head I thought I’d let my friends and family down who had come to watch, visions of any title shots had gone up in smoke and words of encouragement would turn to laughs. I took a day (the Sunday) to lick my wounds and the next day got back in the gym… we got straight back to work booking another fight that night.

Lesson 2: A person who falls and gets back up is a much stronger one than fell in the first place

First session - my coach insisted the first day following warmup that we went directly in to competitive grappling - pairing me up with the best submission grappler in our team. For 30 minutes solid we batted on the mat, with growing realisation that he was trying to trap me in a Triangle submission, the same hold I’d lost to two days earlier! As my realisation grew so did my anger, until I’d abandoned again thoughts of defending the submission to trying to tap my team mate with one - again - I was choked out thirty seconds later. Standing me up my coach asked, like the weekend, what I had done. It was clear - I’d let pride override what I should do and instead done what my opponent wanted me to do.

Lesson 3: Own your mistakes, learn from them and move on.

Following this humbling - we began to develop the plan for my next fight. Knowing that I was supposed to be fighting a good all around MMA fighter, we worked to a striking heavy game plan - however identifying the mistakes of being taken down in the last fight and staying down, we worked on three additional elements heavily.

• The use of knee strikes and uppercuts to deter my opponent from prolonged wrestling attacks?
• Winner stays on wrestling defence to ensure I was prepared for??someone trying to take me down
• Stand up drills where I would start on the floor and work my way back to my feet.

This all complimented my boxing heavy style and could be implemented with fair ease.

Lesson 4: Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not eliminating weakness.

As the weeks drew on, my opponent dropped out of the fight, I was assured by my promoter this wouldn’t be a problem. Surely another one was found… until he dropped out, on and on this went until I was on my 5th who, unlike the first, was a very good grappler, similar to the man I’d just lost to. We kept training regardless.

Lesson 5: It doesn’t matter what others are doing, it matters what you are doing.

Fight day arrives and I’m nervous - false confidence exuding on the assured (cocky) 21 year old me - inside I have their itchy thought in my mind… what if I get beat again, how good am I, blah blah. The day moves on fast forward and, before you know it, I’m warming up, walking up to the balcony entrance where the fighters come out from and then.... my music is playing and, all of a sudden, time seems to slow for the first time that day and I feel clear - I stay focused on the cage in front of me but I can see every one of my friends faces, hear the music beat for beat and for the first time since I’d walked out four months previously feel that inexplicable rush of competing in one of the purest ways possible.

This lesson took a few years to realise but 9 years later and now at the realisation I won’t feel that rush again becomes ever more relevant.

Lesson 6: Enjoy the moment - it will soon become a memory.

The least I will say Is about the fight itself. It went well. Executing the game plan, using positions and strikes I’d been drilling for months I secured the win. I remember being stood in the middle and letting out one big exhale of relief - it’s a feeling like no other being able to execute and achieve - worth much more than any praise.

Lesson 7: An ounce of performance is worth a tonne of promise.

Following the fight I did the usual - celebrated with my friends, enjoyed the night and went for a big meal afterward. When I received the message pictured, I had mixed reaction initially - “how dare he think I’m a breeze?!”, on reflection I decided actually regardless of anyone else’s thought process I had put in my best ever performance and enjoyed myself doing it.

Lesson 8: Being underestimated is no bad thing. Underestimating someone is.

3 months later my fledging marketing career began to take shape, I secured an Account Executive role at Kanjo and full time athlete turned in to full time job. Still, to this day I try to remember the above, often times I’ll get it wrong, times I fail to live by my own standards - however lessons 2 & 3 soon serve to knock me in to place.