The Comeback Quotient by Matt Fitzgerald

The Comeback Quotient by Matt Fitzgerald

Author:Matt Fitzgerald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aurum
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00


The How: Improvisation, Belief

Boxer Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” While athletes in noncombat sports don’t often get punched in the mouth, they do often see things go wrong in unexpected ways that force them to abandon their plan and improvise, or scramble, as I like to say. In golf, scrambling is the improvisational style of play that becomes necessary when you hit an errant tee shot and the ball ends up in the kind of lie you can’t really practice for. Making the best of a bad situation requires that you scramble effectively. But how is this done? The answer that we get by studying the ultrarealists can be summed up in the familiar cliché, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Some people are natural planners. Being one will put you in good stead when things are going your way. But when they’re not, it’s better to be highly motivated because desperation breeds resourcefulness (as we see with many addicts), and when you find yourself in a bad situation that you really want to make the best of, you feel desperate. In fact, being a natural planner can be a detriment when things go wrong because many planners loathe uncertainty, whereas scramblers are able to tackle a crisis with the attitude that they can figure out how to make the best of the situation as they go and that the important thing for now is to stay in the fight.

Chris Wilson is not a natural planner. He hadn’t thought more than one step ahead in his entire life until he found himself locked up and desperate to change his reality. Simply asking himself the question, “What’s my endgame?” was an awakening for him, a mental paradigm shift. Even then, the first iterations of his Master Plan were woefully shortsighted, rife with superficial ambitions such as joining the Mile High Club and partying on a cigarette boat. Over time, though, the Master Plan evolved in the direction of greater maturity, Chris’s shallower objectives giving way to goals of self-improvement (one of which was to run a marathon), proving himself to the powers in whose hands his fate lay, and helping others. Because he had the will, he found a way.

David Goggins isn’t a natural planner either. Heck, he did a 100-mile running event three days after he first conceived the idea of running 100 miles! Of course, he paid a heavy price for his lack of preparation. But because of (not despite) the suffering he endured in that experience, David came away from it highly motivated to see how far he could push himself as an ultrarunner, and he planned meticulously for his next race, Badwater, scouting the 135-mile course by car and marking the best locations for his support crew to stop and ply him with drinks, food, and ice, and even mapping the gas stations and convenience stores where these supplies could be obtained.

David’s quest to break the world record for the most pull-ups completed in 24 hours followed a similar pattern.



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