My favorite quote, and LeBron James’s apparent favorite, is the “Man in the Arena” quote from Teddy Roosevelt. It goes like this:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. 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, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
This quote resonates with me because I’ve been a very competitive person my whole life. I would always compare myself to other people and base my assessment of myself based on what other people did, and how I did compared to them. I had that mindset because, usually, it worked. “At least I didn’t do as bad as Kevin or John” was a thought that often ran through my head if I ever did poorly on a test.
It took me a while to realize how limiting that mindset is, and the “Man in the Arena” quote helped me get rid of that. One of my former friends and teammates said that the best form of competition is competing against yourself. He said (in a business school graduation speech many expected something very different) that your greatest barometer of success is how you fared against yourself from yesterday, a form of self-competition that drove him to keep a 4.0 GPA for four years. At the time, I thought it was smart. I thought it was wise. But it wasn’t something I’ve really taken to heart until recently.
The past year, I’ve made it a point to stop being the critic, as, after all, you don’t know what a certain person has been through. I started to realize that my greatest moments of self-hatred were those of inaction — because it meant I wasn’t throwing myself in the arena, and wasn’t even trying. If I was going to write a really crappy article, do poorly on an exam, or run a really bad race on the track, I’ve started taking a lot of the pride in the feeling that hey, at least I did it.
The people who sit on their high horse and think they know better for you for your own life? I used to be a huge critic of critics. I always thought I needed to fire back and maybe be a critic of their lives and look at their shortcomings in the same areas they criticized me. I know I can’t control what I feel, but I decided that I don’t need to fire back anymore. Let the critics spend their time as just that: critics.
There was a point when it occurred to me that the game is different for everyone. Don’t ask yourself whether something you did was good relative to other people. Ask yourself if it was good relative to yourself.
Another thing I realized the past year as a runner is that the sport is not always kind. There was a point in my own and each of my teammates’ careers that the sport is the antithesis of that: at some point, we were really sick, or really injured while we had to watch our teammates compete and have fun without us. For each of us, it absolutely sucked, but there were a lot of things we learned, like the fact that we were so lucky to have the privilege to be able to run at all in the first place, or the fact that if we couldn’t contribute traditionally, then the game would have to change and we’d have to contribute in other ways for our coaches and teammates.
And I’ve tried my best to walk with people through their arenas and their battles. But always, I’ll come up short. Wise people also told me that they have to make difficult decisions on their own terms. While critics will tell me how much a person might be “faking it” or “bullshitting,” I always take someone’s word for how they describe their ordeals, always give them the benefit of the doubt. That’s what we want if we were in that arena, isn’t it?
The Man in the Arena is a famous passage from the speech Citizenship in a Republic, given by by Theodore Roosevelt. It’s about standing strong when tested.
It goes like this …
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
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, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
You grow, by putting yourself out there. If you’ve ever been in a situation that requires great courage, skill or tenacity, then, you know what it’s like to be “the man in the arena.”