“It is not the critic that counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled…the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again…who at best knows achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”–Theodore Roosevelt
I cannot stand people that sit on the sidelines and slam others that are actually in the game of life pursing their goals. Somehow the critics on the sidelines think they are better than people that take risks in life and are not afraid to screw up and make mistakes. Critics think they are too good to get their hands dirty and actually live instead of trying to steal the thunder from others. Moreover, critics often enjoy seeing others having setbacks. They take a sick pleasure in seeing others fail and actually want people to give up as it makes them feel better about their own inadequacies.
The internet is full of arm chair experts that talk a tough talk on message boards. In fact while message boards can be a great source of information and a great place to generate interesting discussions, they always attract trolls that enjoy starting trouble with an anonymous name. Yes more often than not they use anonymous names as they are cowards that would never back up their moronic behavior in the real world. That is a certainty. People that talk tough online are never bad asses in person. Real fighters fight, they do not talk about it.
Here is an interesting lesson I learned from my bouncing days back when I was in college. People that can fight attack without warning. They do not want you to know what is coming. They inflict the damage and move on. People that are insecure with their lack of fighting skills always have to jack themselves up by talking smack before the fight starts. They require verbally intimidating others to sniff out weakness. Once their confidence is up, they attack. Once a real fighter comes across the verbal intimidator, he would simply punch the intimidator in the face (no one likes to get punched in the face and it is a real confidence killer) as hard as possible before the verbal intimidator was ready to roll. At that point the fight was always over as the verbal intimidator always lost what little confidence he had at that moment and realized that he was out of his league.
Critics are not much different than verbal intimidators. Once you show that you have what it takes to back up you’re actions they have to eat crow and shut up. Doers are always more powerful than watchers. It takes courage to take action and finish what you start. Anyone can sit on the sidelines and watch others. It is easy to think that you know better then people on the field. However, you have no clue what the real deal is until you are on the field. Conjecture becomes reality and reality is never what you expected it to be.
Spend less time looking for faults in others and instead work on improving yourself. Want to make more money? Work on yourself and develop more skills. Want to get stronger and faster? Do not put others down that are better than you. Learn from them and improve. We should be inspired by anyone that excels rather than pick them apart looking for faults. Even if someone is not successful it takes courage to play the game. Who cares if you lose, just the fact that you put it on the line and rolled the dice is a success. A fighter that has the courage to fight in mixed martial arts and ends up losing every fight is far more courageous then the fat critic in the audience eating a hot dog and drinking Coors light.
Get off the critic couch and get in the ring of life. Yes you will take many blows. So what, you have one life, value it and take some chances. What do you have to lose?
