How do the greats manage their humbleness in society. For example, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, etc. How did they become great and an all time best in their fields while dealing with the backlack they most likely got?
For example, them growing up, being in their teens, on sports teams or something with other kids. I can just imagine them being on those teams, and for them to have a mindset to be the best, they have to consciously be better than all their teammates. If that happened, how did these ‘greats’ deal with the backlash of that? Competing to be better than your teammates, having them give you dirty looks, be jealous of you, conspire against you, gossip about you, etc?
What i’m saying is, how do you be the best, and by being the best, that requires consciously looking down on your peers because you want to be better than them, and that resulting in your peeps not liking you and alienating you. How would a ‘great’ constantly deal with that negativity? How would it not get to them. Cause it’s getting to me.
Or maybe these people became ‘great’ or ‘the best’ without consciously having to try to be better than those around them and looking down on them. Not really sure how that would work but I guess it’s possible. How else are they gonna be great besides competing with teammates and the enemy team and studying what they do and trying to be better? Watching YouTube videos? Being coaches one on one? Who knows.
My current problem is boxing. I go in, I try to say very little, not have too much pressure or attention on me, etc. But at the end of the day, I really want more. I try to not think in black and white: I don’t have to be 100% quiet and 100% avoid eye contact. I also don’t have to make 100% eye contact and look at everyone there and talk to everyone all the time. I try to be somewhere in between there.
Anyways, my point is, I want to be the best. I want to make friends. I even welcome the possibility of finding a girlfriend there. So what’s the problem. I want to be the best and even have a possibility of making money from boxing one day. So what’s the problem? To be the best, I must spar with the people there. I must beat them. I must study how they box and be better than them and not make their mistakes. That leads to a mindset of thinking i’m better than them, probably appearing that I look down on them, and give them dirty looks.
That alienates me. People don’t wanna talk to me or be around me if they know I think i’m better than them. Then of course the obvious stuff that I think everyone deals with: the negative people who i’m confused by. There are literal kids who are 13 years old or like 14 or 16 and they walk around constantly with a dirty/mad look and they look at me like that. I have no clue why they look at me like that, cause I didn’t do anything ot warrant that, so it just bums me out whenever I see them. And I have naturally developed an attitude that I don’t like those people.
It’s even gotten to the point where some of these people, I see them sparring with others, and I actually want certain people to lose and get punched hard just because these people give me dirty looks and laugh at me.
Then at the end of the day, it’s pure silence in the locker room. No one really talks to me or looks at me. It feels like a free for all. Is this what is actually conducive to my success? Very little actual socializiatoin so I don’t form bonds with these people so I continue trying to be better than them so I can go pro one day? Because being friends with them would get personal and make me feel bad for wanting to be better than them and fight them? I don’t know.
I just know that most times I leave that boxing gym feeling like my silence causes the entire gym to be silent. I don’t know. It’s complicated. There are actual people boxing there who think entirely the opposite of me. I try to mind my own business and not watch others. But there are literal dudes who don’t take it seriously at all. They run at half-speed, don’t learn proper boxing techniques or put in an effort, don’t look at others to learn from them, etc. Those are the people who I think don’t have the cognitive ability or desire to be serious about this. They’re the people that are the ‘sheep’ and box to seemingly waste time.
I’m trying to mix in a little bit of everything. I go there to check out pretty women, sometimes crack jokes, sometimes not give a shit and just half speed, and then I also have times where I go 110%, spar with people and go crazy, and even get mad at the people there for seemingly looking down on me.
So again, back to my main point: how do you become the best without making enemies of absolutely everyone? Being the best literally requires being better than all your peers and friends. How do you do that without making everyone hate you and be jealous of you? Especially cause this is a one man sport. It’s like being one man against the world. How do you come home after that and not feel empty inside?
Another example: helping people. People say to focus on yourself and that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. This reminds me of family members who are extremely stoic, sad and depressed. If I followed all the logic people have taught me, i’d just mind my own business, let people be sad around me, but treat them as if they’re fine, and that their sadness is their business and I should leave them alone.
But I have extreme evidence against that. Everyone says they’re fine and can take care of themselves, but I have literally seen sad people get worse if I ignore them, not ask them about their problems, and not hang out with them much. I’ve seen people get happier and feel better from me hanging out with them and talking about their problems (but of course no one will admit I helped them). It’s such a dictomoty.
So there’s two examples. The dichotomoy of helping people when it technically wouldn’t make sense to and it’s against social norms, and the dichotomy of wanting to be the best at something even though if you did that to the fullest, you’d gain entire enemies of the whole world.
Here’s another example: Justin Bieber. He actively speaks about life in ways that imply he really does know he’s extremely talented and that he’s better than others. But obviously he doesn’t express that too extremely, otherwise he’d have no fans! He wouldn’t have fans because they’d all hate him for being too arrogant! But he makes music.. and is not known for just his talking and opinions. But you get my point. He became that famous and succesful from being the best and actively trying to feel and appear and be better than others, yet he has 100 million+ fans and listeners.
Life is just a plain weird paradox.
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