Life:Boxing
Life is like a̶̶̶ ̶b̶̶̶o̶̶̶x̶̶̶ ̶o̶̶̶f̶̶̶ ̶c̶̶̶h̶̶̶o̶̶̶c̶̶̶o̶̶̶l̶̶̶a̶̶̶t̶̶̶e̶̶̶s̶̶̶ Boxing.
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
-Mike Tyson
The Man In The Arena
Life is like boxing; both demand sacrifices. The ability to accept wins and losses. And the desire to thrive under hardship. Life, like boxing, should be approached as an infinite game. In pursuing greatness, life will continually challenge you to put it all on the line—to push past the familiar and into the unknown in order to unlock new possibilities for yourself. Every fighter who has ever risen through the ranks to become a world champion has had to do this daily for a large part of their lives. Outside of the ring, anyone who’s ever done anything admirable has also had to accept and possess this growth mindset.
In the boxing world it’s commonly said, “you can’t play boxing,” (meaning you can’t play around about taking it serious) and we shouldn’t play about outcomes in life either. The Sweet Science comes with highs and lows, and like life, derives a lot of it’s meaning from acts of discipline & tenacity. When trying to facilitate change, everyday can feel like a fight. Your beliefs, fears, and emotional scripts (ingrained reactions to situations) are constantly tested by the world around you. Those who can download, analyze, and adapt to this barrage of information the fastest, stand to benefit the most. And to the victor go the spoils.
In biology, all organisms, without effort, naturally trend towards entropy—towards disorder, and, ultimately, death. This tells us that if we stop fighting this natural force and give up our will to strive for something greater, decay is inevitable. This is when life feels monotonous and we effectively become accustomed to operating off autopilot and going with the flow of things. To snap out of this state, we usually have to get hit with something we didn’t see coming—it could be a left-hook. Only then, after registering the pain, do we reflect and determine if the path we’re on is truly the right one.
When the great Muhammad Ali coined the phrase, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” he wasn’t just talking about how one should fight inside the ring. Handling life’s challenges with the fluidity of a butterfly will pay compounding dividends. On the flip side, knowing when and how to “sting like a bee” when it’s necessary, will allow you to enforce healthy boundaries as you navigate life. That’s the essence of this writing’s message. What follows is four anecdotes about boxing and their connection to how we should approach life.
#1 - Eyes On The Prize
In boxing, your vision is the first and most significant line of defense against getting hit. It is also very important for your offense because it drives your ability to inflect damage on your opponent. You can’t hit what you can’t see, and trying to slip(dodge) an incoming punch that you cant see is like playing Russian roulette with your body. In life, your vision is everything. And I’m not just talking about what your eyes can see. Problems that can’t be seen can’t be fixed. And not being spiritually connected to your intuition, that’s been developed over thousands of years and passed down to you by evolution, is probably one of the worst states you can be in. You’re intuition allows you to decipher micro-expressions.
It’s said that around 90% of our communication is nonverbal. Not having the awareness to identify the unsaid within yourself and others around you is just setting yourself up for opposing forces to capitalize, usually at the worst moments.
Often times, people won’t give you honest feedback, especially if it can be seen as harsh. But on the road to self-mastery, thats the exact information thats critical to growth, don’t shy away from it. This is where cultivating the ability to be ruthlessly grounded in reality towards yourself is beneficial. The tricky part about that though is you have to also have compassion towards yourself on where you’re currently at and extend grace to yourself as you navigate on the path to where you eventually want to be. I attempted to sum this challenging dichotomy up in a tweet:
If I can get you to close your eyes, I can do whatever I want to you. Worst, you won’t even know what hit you. Like a prize fighter in the championship rounds, always fight to keep your awareness sharp, I think the cool kids call this “keeping your third-eye open” or “stay woke,” or maybe even “keep your head on a swivel” whatever you fancy, commit to constant improvement in this area and you’ll be solid.
#2 - Energy Transfer
Life and boxing are all about energy transfer. In fighting, a fighter must learn to channel negative emotions like anger, fear, and mental fatigue into positive alternatives such as confidence, focus, and unwavering determination. Physically, they must master the paradoxical nature of throwing punches correctly while battling extreme muscle fatigue and pain. The act of throwing a punch requires proper energy transfer, starting at the back foot on the ground, moving through the hips, and extending to the tip of the glove that (hopefully) makes contact with the opponent. Attempting to punch without incorporating the whole body is called “arm punching.” Its best described as a paradox: the harder you try to force a punch, the weaker it becomes. It also telegraphs your intentions to your opponent, giving them the opportunity to brace or set you up for a counter. The punches that inflict the most damage are smooth, quick, and sneaky, combining both power and speed.
Before I even knew it was a concept in life, I had already experienced the effects of energy transfer. It happened during one of the first times I entered into an altered state, facilitated by a well-known medicinal herb. The friend I was with at the time began to feel paranoid. In my attempt to calm them down, I, too, became paranoid. It was as if their emotional state slowly took hold of mine, influenced by the energy they were putting out. We ended up skipping the movie we planned to see and instead sat in the parking lot, convinced our hearts were gonna beat out of our chests until the effects wore off. At this point in my life, it goes without saying—emotions can be contagious. Whether positive or negative. When it comes to negative emotions, I’ve found the best way to deal with them is to transmute them, we’ll talk more about that in a bit.
These days, there’s a lot of talk around about emotions—about which ones are appropriate to express and which ones aren’t. Truth be told, I’m not here to get into that debate. What I do want to point out is that boxing, like life, is an emotional endeavor. Emotions shouldn’t be locked away; they should be expressed with discernment. We’re all emotional beings. With the right tools you can control your emotions instead of letting them control you. Boxing is one way to do that—and you don’t even need to hit anyone. I’ve found simply the act of hitting a heavy bag can transmute emotions like anger, anxiety, frustration into something more positive: a healthy heart, a content mind, and, as a bonus, a chiseled body if you stay at it long enough. Thats just one way to transmute energy within yourself, find one that works for you. Blocked emotions that don’t get released, get trapped in the body and cause chronic illness.
#3 - Everything Circular
The boxing circle is a fundamental footwork paradigm in boxing thats calls for fighting your opponent in a circular pattern instead of in straight lines back and forth. Like many fighting styles, boxing starts with the feet and all boxing matches starts off with fighters battling for foot dominance. Being just slightly out of position during an exchange can be a costly mistake. The circle technique emphasizes fighting and defending at angles, stepping to the side when attacking, or maneuvering out of a punching exchange.
We should fight our battles in life in the same way, there’s usually multiple ways to solve a problem and we should consider attacking with solutions from as many different angles as possible that ensures we solve the problem and move on victorious, whatever that may mean for you.
A circle’s shape is a metaphor to the cyclic nature of all things life and boxing. Isaac Newton’s third Law states that:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
-Isaac Newton
Whether you believe in Yin and Yang or the law of Karma, life events follow a cyclical pattern. Tables turn, situations flip over time—the only true constant in life is change. Embracing this fundamental truth can grant you empathic wisdom.
We all like to think we’re unique, but in reality, when it comes to emotions, we are all wired with the same set of emotional expressions. We’re connected in the sense that we can all relate to one another emotionally. At some point, we’ve all felt what another human is currently feeling or has felt, even if only for a moment. It’s why we listen to music, watch movies, and engage with popular culture—we seek connection through shared emotions.
If you’re feeling bad right now, know that eventually, hopefully soon, you’ll feel good again. And if you’re in a state of euphoria, it’s only natural that, at some point in time you’ll come back down to earth. A quote by the legendary Maya Angelou expands on this:
We are all human; therefore, nothing human can be alien to us.
- Maya Angelou
Taking both the good and bad into account, anything another human does can’t be alien to us since we’re all human. It’s very easy to quickly claim, “I’d never do something like that” or “I wish I could do something like that” for both good and bad actions, the truth is that we can and we may (given the situation). It’s natural to judge, but trying to understand is how we really learn, swapping out your emotional lens for another when trying to analyze a situation allows us to see potential gaps in our own lives. I’m not calling for people to be let off the hook when it comes to bad actions—accountability is apart of the circle of life as well. But in a complex world filled with humans carrying unlimited permutations of experiences, baggage, and trauma, understanding should be the ultimate goal when looking at human behavior. We shouldn’t think in straight lines, but instead take principles from the circle technique from boxing and examine situations from multiple angles. Only then can we truly empathize and ultimately understand the human experience—an experience we each have only one chance to live.
#4 - The Serenity Prayer
Lastly, Boxing is like life in that, to be successful, you have to embrace the principles of the Serenity Prayer.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Whatever higher power you believe in, when you step into the ring with another highly trained human being ready to deliver blows that could, at best, knock you out and, at worst, kill you—you’d better have some serenity about the situation.
Serenity is all about acceptance. In life, acceptance precedes growth, because you can’t manifest true behavior change if you’re still stuck in the past. The future you envision requires a new version of yourself, and accepting and laying to rest the past is the first step in the process of bringing it to life.
Serenity is release. It’s the acknowledgment that things may not go the way you want them to go, but you’ll be okay regardless. The Carthaginian general Hannibal embodied this ethos.
I will either find a way or make one.
-Hannibal
Life achievement is all about putting in the work, putting forth your best effort all while continuing to push as hard as you can. And when the period of preparation is over and the time to fight arrives, being ready to prove yourself. Win or lose, life will go on. Skin In The Game.
In 2023 Ryan Garcia’s boxing record stood at 23-0 going into his bout with Tank Davis. An undefeated Davis would be Garcia’s toughest opponent up until that point, both undefeated, at the end of the scheduled twelve-round fight, one of them would no longer be undefeated. That night, fate’s coin toss landed in Davis’ favor, and Garcia left the arena with a new record of 23-1.
A year later, Garcia would fight again, this time Devin Haney, another undefeated fighter with a similar skill set. This fight was highly polarizing with both Garcia’s and Haney’s supporters believing their fighter could easily win the fight. That night, fate’s coin toss landed in Garcia’s favor. With many, myself included, watching being stunned on his dominant performance against the generational talent of Haney. (see footnote)
Thats the beauty of it—of life, of boxing. Sometimes we win, and other times we lose. As long as we’re alive, no matter the outcome of any particular fight, we’ll always have the possibility to grow, to improve—to try again for a better future that we’ve envisioned for ourselves. My hope for you is that you embrace the ideals of the serenity prayer and learn the life skills that facilitate you winning more than losing. In the words of J. Cole,
Fuck the horoscopes, know the ropes like a wrestler.
-J. Cole
Which I take as meaning, care less about the script the world has written for you. Design your life in a way that best suits you, strive to do right by others, and always stay locked in to the present moment all while mastering the rules of the game—just like a wrestler bouncing off the ropes to Swanton Bomb or Muhammed Ali rope-a-doping a soon to be knocked out opponent.
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footnote: It’s came out that Garcia later tested positive for a banned substance the night of the Haney fight. The amount was small but was over the limit causing the fight to be considered a NC (no-contest). It still tells the story of winning & losing which is why I included it.