What To Do When Life Kicks You In The Teeth

If you ever try to achieve a big goal … improve your life … or step outside your comfort zones … you’re going to eventually get knocked to the ground, stomped on and kicked in the teeth by life.

This is what you do when that happens

How I *Spectacularly* Bombed Out Of My First Powerlifting Meet …

Late last year, I decided to compete in my first powerlifting meet (a competition where you attempt to lift the most amount of weight possible in the squat, bench press and deadlift)

If you’ve seen my other posts, I’m no superman, but not that weak for my size … I was expecting to do well.

In addition to that, I decided to lose 23lbs to drop into a lower weight class to further help my score.

What happened ?

First, I Lost 23lbs in 14 Days …

I’ll share how I did this later, because I’m sure there’s a lot of people who want to know this

Also, in order to increase my strength, masculinity and overall badassness I shaved what little beard I had to reveal a super manly mustache.

(In previous efforts, the addition of a mustache has led to more weight lifted, more endurance, more women in my bed, etc so I was very optimistic with the addition of this “upgrade”)

And I continued training for the competition and was feeling good and expecting to do well …

Then, the unthinkable happened …

The Day Of The Competition …

The first exercise in the competition is the squat. I picked a weight to “open” with that I could easily do triples with in the gym, figuring this would be easy to lift for my first attempt (you get to do three different weights/attempts).

So when it was time to do the thing, I walked up and set up under the bar for the squat … walked it out … got a big belly full of air … sat back into the squat … hit the depth I needed … started to come up … and …

The Bar Would NOT Move!

I was flatlined right in the “Transition” of the squat, half way up half way down, the bar — no matter how hard I pressed into the floor with my feet and drove into it with my upper back, just stayed in place.

The weirdest feeling ever.

I had to rack it, missed lift.

Then I got a couple more chances …

“If at first you don’t succeed” …

Try and try again right?

Luckily, you get 3 attempts at each weight.

So I got up there again, went for it again and the same thing happened. Wouldn’t go past that point.

Then one more time, and the same results.

The bottom line? I BOMBED out of my first competition … not even able to lift a weight I could easily lift for multiple sets in the gym just weeks before.

When It Rains It Pours …

To add insult to injury:

• My brother, a former powerlifter, showed up and watched me fail
• My mom, drove to see my first competition, and watched me fail
• My nephew and niece not only saw me fail, but my nephew asked, “Why did you give up?” when I didn’t do it
• My training partners, Jabba the Bench, Brucie and Brett who got up before 5am to drive me there all saw me fail
• My dad, showed up a little late, missed seeing me fail, but got to hear about it

So what did I do?

WTF? Getting Pissed and Recovery …

The first thing I do when I fail … and believe me … I have a LOT of experience at failing … is I go quiet.

In those first couple moments, I want NOTHING MORE than to be left alone to my own thoughts. To consider my performance, what I did, what I didn’t do and what could have gone wrong.

This is usually not able to be accomplished when you have people around you supporting you. God bless these people but the LAST thing I want to hear is “you did a good job!” after a failure.

All it causes for me is extreme annoyance. I just like to be left alone. I try not to be a dick at this point, but a lot of times I answer people short and with obvious annoyance.

I’m not saying this is the right way to do it, or that I’m even remotely proud of it, just being honest …

But, after dealing with other people, I try to get a moment to myself to figure out what happened. And then …

I Get Really Pissed At Myself. Temporarily.

I get pissed that I lost. That I failed.

In the words of a really successful guy I forgot the name of, “winners are not good losers” because they want to win.

But here’s the thing …

You can NOT stay in this mode.

Set yourself a TIME LIMIT to be pissed, angry at your performance or depressed …

Depending on the loss and amount of teeth that were kicked in by life, this period of time can last a few minutes for me to a few days.

For this competition? About 10 mins and I was good.

(It didn’t look like that to the people I was with because I was moving on to the next part, where I get quiet again …)

Then I go back to …

Figuring Out Why It Didn’t Work …

With a clearer mind, not influenced by my emotions, it’s time to think.

Go over what I did, didn’t do, my peformance, etc … all that stuff again …

That’s what you do. You figure out why it didn’t work this time and mentally prepare for your next attempt (in this case, at a later date because I bombed out of the competition).

That’s what you gotta do man.

Fail. Get Pissed. Get Over It. Re-group and Refocus.

That’s all you got to do to get over getting knocked down, stomped on and kicked in the teeth by life.

Welcome the process because you’re going to be going through it a lot if you ever try to accomplish anything of worth in this life.

Then you can have some fun with people …

For example:

Tell your weightlifting buddies that you’re quitting powerlifting, shaving your body hair, taking up bodybuilding and doing fitness competitions because powerlifting is gay and so is lifting weights …

Then you can wait to see if they believe you or not

Let’s Recap …

• Life is hard, you get knocked down a lot
• If you try to do ANYTHING with your life, you’ll get knocked down MORE and kicked in the teeth by life
• When it happens, it usually SUCKS really bad
• Don’t supress your emotions, feel them, accept them, experience them fully …
• Then get over it
• And with a clear mind, examine the circumstances, regroup and plan your next attack
• Never give up

That’s pretty much it. So next time life kicks you in the teeth, I hope this helps