In the movie Rocky V, there were two statements that are worth repeating. In the movie Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) is broke and has lost all his winnings from the other championships when he starts teaching and training this your boxer named Tommy Gunn. Tommy Gunn goes all the way to a championship fight, but fires Rocky as his sponsor right before the fight. The young fighter goes on to win the title, but everyone says he is not as good as Rocky was. He challenges and taunts Rocky to a fight and they end up in a street brawl to settle the matter. In the course of Tommy Gunn’s taunting, he punches Rocky’s brother in-law Paulie and knocks him down. Rocky looks at Tommy Gunn and says (this is 1st statement) “you knocked him down, so now why don’t you try to knock me down.”
Well, the Rocky music started playing and yep Rocky basically whips this young boxer in street and goes on to win the day and the hearts of all the people. It is pure Rocky on the screen.
The 2nd statement happened a little before the fight when his wife Adrian tells him “winning is not about muscle, it’s about heart.” Well, in all 5 of the Rocky movies he had heart. Ha
Why am I telling you about this old movie? Because winning is not about muscle. It is in fact about heart and it is about looking your opponent in the eye and saying gently, take your biggest shot. Your opponent could be fear, anxiety, self-esteem, and doubt, past failures, health or many other examples. More times than not, your biggest opponent is simply fear.
Having heart is the young father that loses his job and goes and gets 3 part-time jobs to take care of his family. It’s the young mom who will stop at nothing to protect and provide for her children. It’s the salesman that simply won’t quit. It’s the person when challenged to the max, pushes through to the other side. It’s the person striving for significance that just won’t quit. It’s the person that is handicapped or the person that just received a bad report from their doctors who says in his or her heart to Satan, “go on, shoot your biggest shot.”
In almost every company in the world the leading salesman is the one that just won’t quit and the one that beats down fear every day and just keeps going.
Sometimes we all need to watch an old Rocky movie because deep inside every one of us is the will to win. Most of the time the difference is the motivation. I have always believed if you can figure out the why, you can figure out the how. Finding the “why” could be one of the most important things you will ever do because that is the purpose that will drive you forward. KT
You too have a lot of “heart” and I love you for the example of what ‘heart” looks like.