It Takes a Wrestling Mindset to Follow Your Calling
Watching the start of the NCAA wrestling championships today, I found myself reflecting on what it means to follow a calling. Each of the roughly 330 wrestlers competing today started as beginners. The first time they choose to step on the wrestling mat, not one of those 330 men had any idea that choice would lead to today.
That choice wasn’t an accident. It’s doesn’t matter how much serendipity one may think led a kid to the wrestling mat for the first time. I believe that any young man who develops the fortitude to advance to the highest level of college wrestling has been called to do so.
Many (if not all) people are called to do something purposeful like this with their life at one time or another. However, most don’t listen. It could be because of their fear of pain, failure, change or some other fear. But it always starts with fear.
I have to commend these 330 college wrestlers for not letting fear hold them back today. Wrestling is the world’s oldest and greatest sport and also the hardest. There’s relatively no chance (barring military service) that anything you’ve been called to do in your life is more difficult than what these men have been called to do to get to this point.
With that said, I challenge you to revisit a life long calling that you are ignoring due to fear. Even more so if you’re a parent of a wrestler. Use that same wrestling mindset to face your fears and follow your calling. Stop just living and instead live your life with purpose. You will not only change your life, but the work you do and the example you set will change the lives of others as well.