Everyone Loves an Underdog

Count money, man.

Money, man.

That gritches.

I'm trying to told him.

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What's up gang?

Welcome back to another episode of The Grindcast.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

Today's title on topic is, everybody loves an underdog until they become the overdog.

So it looks like there's even graphs I've seen of this that are out there that shows just

America in general as someone is climbing and getting better there an underdog, everybody's

cheering for them, rooting for them, hoping that they win.

Happy when they start to climb.

And then once they make it to the top and they start to dominate and do well, that same

energy of people that was rooting for them, people start to hope that they lose.

People for them to fail get sick of seeing them winning.

So we're going to talk a little bit about that today.

When the odds are stacked against you, people love to see you win.

Everybody loves an underdog.

Even I like the underdog at times.

What I've learned to appreciate and respect is the person that you're rooting against,

or thing that you're rooting against, you got to look back and see a lot of times those

were the underdogs that made it and got rooted for it, cheered for it, gave everything

they had, didn't have it naturally built up to this position.

And now all of a sudden everybody's rooting against them.

Underdogs have a fire in them to overcome things.

And everybody loves an underdog story.

But once they start winning a lot, people start hating.

People start hating when the underdogs start getting a bunch of W's.

People forget that Tom Brady was unknown and the patriots were underdogs back in 2002

when they won a Super Bowl.

Tom Brady, people forget was a six round draft pick.

You could look at all the things from all the analysts of how they said he wasn't fast

enough, arm wasn't strong enough, wouldn't be a good quarterback.

They showed pictures of his body didn't look like a prototypical perfect quarterback.

He had to fight for everything in college, didn't start even really starting to a ladder

in his college career at Michigan.

So over time that person that people did not expect to make it, that I forget maybe

it was a dozen quarterbacks got drafted and chosen before Tom Brady, the goat, the greatest

quarterback of all time before the patriots became that dynasty.

They became an NFL powerhouse and everyone got sick of them winning.

And I am not a Patriots fan.

I am a Cleveland Browns fan.

I've been a Browns fan since I was a kid.

My grandfather, Reston Peace gave me that curse and honor of being a Browns fan.

And I've taken it personal to just stay loyal through the thick and thin and it's typically

very thin.

But I know that before the 2014 season, the Golden State Warriors were underdogs and they

ended up winning the championship beating the calves in game six, which I was rooting

for the calves.

Now they're criticized for their play style and stacking their roster.

And the patriots were criticized all over the place.

And so what ends up happening and I think part of this is you got to understand it as

you're on your climb up right now.

And those you that aren't where you want to be, I want to make sure that so there's two

parts of this two angles to look at.

So one is those you that are currently on your climb and you're currently on your climb

and you're climbing and you're not there yet.

I want to let you know that keep the underdog mindset, Jim Sirace, one of my mentors

used to say, make yourself the underdog by the size of the fight that you choose, the

size of the battle that you choose.

You can constantly make yourself an underdog, keeping that mindset, keeping that mentality,

which is what I think Tom Brady did, even when he got to the top that kept them hungry

at the top.

So those you on that journey, you know, right now let's put you in a category and say,

as you're climbing, make a promise to yourself that you're not going to join the crowd and

just become a hater on all the people that are at the top and just want to see everybody

fail.

You do what you want, but I don't think that's the best energy in it because what about

if that were you, what about if that becomes you, when that becomes you or if it ends up

being your daughter or it ends up being your son because what comes around goes around,

no matter what your belief system is, what your faith is, almost every religion can align

somewhat with what you give comes back to you.

And even if it don't come directly back to you, it can come back to you and start to

influence people that you care about and people in your sphere of influence.

And so the karma that you throw out there as a hater, basically I'm saying as you climb

and try to make sure you're not tearing people down that are on top rooting against everybody

on the top.

Happy to see people fail.

You know, people are all can easily get up in arms and wrap the round seeing somebody

at the top fall.

And so don't be a hater.

And the other part of it is as you're on your climb or if you already have made it on

that climb and you're sitting at the top of the mountain, don't take it personal.

That people are hoping for you to lose now because on the climb up when you were ranked

number 10 in the nation at what you do, people were rooting for you.

When you were number five in the nation at what you do, people were still rooting for you.

When you were the underdog in the title fight, you were ranked number three against number

one people were rooting for you.

But then you became number one and you kept beating people and you kept beating people and

you kept beating people and you keep defending your title, defending your belt, keep growing

your business and you're at the top and you're shining and you're blowing up.

And now you're feeling a bunch of hate and energy that people hope that you fail.

Understand that it's not individual to you.

It's not personal.

That is just the way the world works and you got to switch that mindset to understanding

and using that as a gift that having haters is part of the process to being great, part

of the process to growing anything and you have to get the mindset of thank you for that

gift.

We appreciate that gift.

We appreciate that from the haters because we're using it as fuel to get to the next level.

Kobe Bryant said, you got to love your haters for their your biggest fans.

Champions learn how to turn haters into motivators.

That's what I was talking about.

You'll see that in Kobe.

You'll see that in LeBron.

You'll see that in Jordan.

You'll see that in Tom Brady.

You'll see it in all the greats.

It ignites them.

It ignites that same fire when they get to the top as it did when they were an underdog.

Part of the climb is on the climb up the closer you get to your destiny, you're going to

have arrows thrown at you.

You're going to have shots fired at you.

You're going to have people ridiculing you.

You're going to have people talking about you analyzing you.

You got to stay calm in that process.

You got to stay calm when you're at war.

I feel like I could do a whole topic itself on staying calm when you're at war in battle.

There's techniques in ways that you can calm your mind, calm your body, calm your spirit,

calm your heart, calm yourself in the amits of having a bunch of negativity around you,

negative energy around you.

Things that would make people anxious and have anxiety, but I'll just without going

too deep, I'll tell you, find ways for yourself to stay calm under battle and fuel because

there's levels to it.

Just like anything else.

You'll hear fighters say that there's levels to this.

There's levels to this.

There's levels to your ability to be able to handle the hate and ridicule that comes

with growing something and being successful.

It's unfortunate, but it is what it is.

I remember the first level of this is when I, the first level is you just don't care what

people are saying about you for the most part.

Then the second level, I think, is you don't care that much, but some people you allow

to get through, get to you.

Most people, but there's still people that can get to you specifically taking shots at

you.

You let those individual shots about you hit the inside of you and hit your soul versus

hitting your body and rolling right off of your shield.

I remember being in that phase as an individual where I had people, a couple people taking

shots at me years ago, almost a decade ago, at me personally.

I remember my first emotional reaction.

It was evident to me that I did not, I was not where I thought I was from a developmental

state with being able to control my anger because my first reaction to that was to want

to take things into my own hands.

I saw the personal shot at me as a physical challenge almost.

I learned through that process that didn't happen overnight.

How it's really not about me, it's reflecting what is wrong with that person.

If the plan is, anytime anybody wants to say anything about me or ridicule something

about me, the plan is to go around and try to fight everybody.

That would have to turn into my new career 365 days a year because the more that I would

look at people at the top, whether it was rappers, athletes, basketball players, football

players, baseball players, anytime there was a post about them, somebody that was winning,

you could find a bunch of in the comments, you could have a bunch of people that are supporting,

but there was also a bunch of negativity and a bunch of people talking stuff.

I started to learn and look at professionals and imagine myself and say, look, imagine LeBron

James going to play it in a way stadium that there's 70,000 people or 50,000 people in

their signs booing LeBron, somebody saying something from 10 levels up, hey, you know, something

about his mama or something about this.

He's got something about his haircut or something about his game or something he didn't do.

And every time that happens, he's running up in the stands and in the crowd wants to fist

fight the person that's saying stuff.

At some point, he had to get numb to the booze, to the noise, understand as a professional

that these people are paying for tickets to watch you do what you love to do that are being

paid a lot to do what you love to do.

And they're just in the stands ridiculing you.

That's part of being a professional.

And so there's levels to things that will start to happen in each level on the way up for

you is going to be the test that you passed that's going to strengthen you to get you prepared

for the next moment to get you prepared for the next moment.

And typically, most of the time, it's very rare that you find a hater that is doing better

than you.

It's going better than the person that they're hating on.

It's just easier for people to cheer for an underdog who hasn't won yet and it takes

a winner's mindset to keep cheering for the underdog as the underdog stacks up a bunch of

wins and stays on top.

And so for those of you that are on top or those of you that are above the midpoint line

of the mountain in your climate and you got some awards, you got some accolades and you're

having some success and you're feeling a little bit of hate out there and you don't know

how to react to it.

I just want you to get comfortable with it.

Menally get at peace with it.

You got to start to not care what people got to say as much in we're human, right?

But each phase will prepare you for the next level.

Each phase, all I can think of is if I were to present in the United States, which would

be a long shot right now, right?

But if I were the president of the United States of America, 50% of the country would hate

me.

50% of the country would like me.

I could probably at best hope to get to a 70-30.

I don't know how many presidents ended up with a 100% success ratio.

Typically what I know about the presidents is people are trying to kill them.

We've had presidents assassinated.

I think it comes with the job.

Everybody knows that you better have some security because there's people outside the

country trying to kill you.

But there's probably even more people inside your own country that are trying to kill you.

Even if 80% of the people love you, 20% of the people are going to hate you, no matter

what you do, once you make it to the top, once you're in that position of influence

and success, you look up anything.

They hated Jesus.

They hated Mother Teresa.

There was people that talked bad about Mother Teresa.

There was people that talked bad about Martin Luther King.

No matter what you do, those of you that are already there that are on your way.

there, understand that it's an impossible goal to expect for everyone to like you and

talk positively about you and support you.

That part of greatness in moving your moving into the next phase is that each phase comes

with a little bit more scrutiny that you can do 98 things right and two things wrong.

And people are going to point at those two things wrong on you.

Get comfortable with it.

Get to have in peace with it.

And it starts with taking care of yourself knowing what brings you to a sense of peace.

You got to be comfortable with who you are, how you live your life.

Tightening my relationship with the Lord has always helped me just looking and reflecting

upon the Word of God and feeling the Spirit of the Lord with me and trusting that a lot

of these things are out of my control.

I can only control things that I can control and the rest I'm going to give to God and

ask him to be between you and him because I can't control everything.

It doesn't mean that everybody that points a flaw out in you or says something bad about

you is always under the category of hate or either because you can use haters to show

you point things in your life that you need to do better.

But there's also people that aren't necessarily hating on you that will point things out

that you can do better in your life or in your business.

And those things, if you're open-minded, you can't put everybody into the category of

hate or that doesn't agree with everything that you do or says something because those

are areas that people can point out flaws of yours that you can look at and almost you

want to look internally and digest it first and say, what is it true?

Because if there's parts of it that's true, you can internalize it and say, well, maybe

I can change that part of my game or change that part of my life.

They might not be wrong necessarily in that.

But just remember everybody loves an underdog and today becoming an overdog.

So the haters out there admit it, acknowledge it, and flip to the other side.

Start to root for other people and root for the people that were already underdogs that

are on top.

And those you guys that are on the climb and already on top, be encouraged that you're

not alone, get comfortable at it because I'd imagine for you whatever three levels up

looks like for you, whatever your vision is is going to come with a little bit more.

So this is just a setup to prepare you, develop your calluses on your body, on your spirit,

on your mind to get you prepared for the next level.

But I think that all things are possible.

With God, all things are possible.

And if you're called for greatness as part of the job, it should come with the job description

of whatever you're trying to do big is that there's going to be these things that happen

and don't let it stop you.

So thanks for joining us on another episode of the Grandcasts.

Get ready.