I’m not trying to help “perfect people” with this blog. My dream is to help the underdogs in life become the champions in their own story. One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give an underdog is to embrace the slingshot mentality in their own life story. What is the slingshot mentality? It’s the ability to take the pent-up emotion from everything that’s held you back in life, and turn it into raw energy that can propel you to achieve everything you want to accomplish in life.
The idea for the slingshot mentality came from a close friend of mine. We were having lunch one day, and he said something profound when he defined the act of turning challenges and discouragement into positive action:
He said: “Sometimes, when certain people are held back in life for whatever reason, that energy can build inside them like their entire lives are being pulled back in a slingshot. When they are finally freed from their challenge (often from a harmful addiction or series of bad choices in life), their energy is finally released like they’re shot out of the slingshot they were stuck in and they have the opportunity to shoot ten times further than if they had just rolled through life like a normal person.”
I thought this concept was super cool, because if it is applied into a life, it can give encouragement to those who feel helpless, discouraged, and unfairly targeted by bad luck. If you want to be successful in whatever dreams you have, abandon the helpless mentality. You are here for a reason, and the challenges you face are there for a reason. Don’t let them beat you. Instead, learn what they are teaching you, and use all those learning lessons, and frustration you’ve felt, and embrace them as the giant slingshot they are meant to be in your life, to make you grow, mature, toughen up, and slingshot you ten times as far as you could have gone if you just would have rolled through life with nothing extreme happening to you.
In conclusion, what is the slingshot mentality, and how am I challenging you to incorporate it into your life? It’s simple:
Rebel against all feelings that lead you to feeling helpless and defeated. Rather than allowing that mental energy to drive you downward into a state of depression and uselessness, transform that energy into a drive to break free from every harmful addiction and negative decision. Allow this transformational energy to build like a slingshot around your life, so that when you’re ready, it can shoot you to accomplish every goal you dream of accomplishing in life.
All winners in life start out as losers at some point. But winners find creative ways to:
Turn depression into hope.
Anger into positive action.
Feelings of defeat into unstoppable drives to achieve.
Use the slingshot mentality to break the chains holding you down in your past, and use that energy to shoot you into the mindset of totally taking control of all your actions to guide your future to where you want to be.
Winners understand: You always have the choice to become the person you want to be, or the person you don’t want to be. The person who will shoot 10X as far as everyone else, or the person who will roll through whatever fate life gives them. I believe wealth is what is created when you choose the mindset to become ten times the person you could have easily been by just rolling through life.
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That’s a thoughtful metaphor, Billy. I wish I knew the impetus that gets people to release from their confines like a bat out of hell. Sometimes you see a defining moment, yet you still have inertia. We’ve seen people get to the point where we think they’ve hit bottom, only for them to sink lower. Or, they rise above but only just a little bit. And then they coast there. It’s good enough. Maybe they’re just not angry enough to make a change?
You’re totally right Mrs Groovy. I wish I could package the impetus into a tiny pill, and give it to all the great people out there who deserve a second chance but are still caged and being defeated by the demons in their life. I think it has to be a choice where you get so angry with your own life, that you finally get sick of being angry, and turn all of that anger into energy to go to battle with all the demons holding an individual down. A common phrase in Alchoholic Anonymous, or any recovery program, is that eventually you have to get, “Sick and tired, of being sick and tired” before you can change. I realize not everyone can or will embrace the slingshot mindset to propel them out of their nightmare, but my goal and dream has always been just to help one person out there, and maybe there’s one person out there who will read this, and it will inspire them to go to war with the demons in their own life, and launch themselves to go 10X further than they ever could have gone if they had stayed stuck in their cage and just rolled through life.