Becoming Aware is the hard part

that ego will always tell you different

Photo by Mahdi Bafande on Unsplash

That Ronaldo interview !!!

Unless you have been living under a rock, you would have heard about this 2 part interview done by one of the greatest sportspeople of our generation with the journalist Piers Morgan.

Now non, football fan subscribers, please stay with me.

There is a point in here somewhere.

In short, Ronaldo called out his club (employer) and payer of his wages of close to £500K a week.

He called out his manager, previous managers, and even some of his work colleagues to present and previous.

(so think of that work night out where we had too much to drink and carried on scandalous. And are faced with that walk into the office the next day) and multiply it x 10

WHY?

Well, IMO, he wants a way out of the club, his contract terminated, and a chance of a new beginning elsewhere.

Sadly, he can no longer fit the style of the club's way of playing, where speed and power are the philosophy.

Now give him a break; he is 37 and still capable of another year or so someplace else.

But the ego is telling him it's not his age, and it is not his loss of speed or power, and it is everyone else's fault, bar his.

In his mind, he still is the best. He still is number 1 (judging by the number of £s in his bank, he is)

All the money in the bank and all the sponsorship he is getting do not give him the right to play weekly.

And when he doesn't, it's time to blame everyone and everything for protecting his ego.

How often do we allow our ego to stop us from realizing the obvious?

That job that's not going well, blame our boss and colleagues when our application has slowed.

The weight we have put on is always our schedules fault, our busy lives, the gym equipment is shit, etc.

That unhappy relationship we find ourselves in, yet it's never our fault, pointing the finger at the shortcomings of the other rather than becoming aware of our own.

It may not be the other person's fault or the job's. It may be the environment, the people we surround ourselves with, the language we speak, but more importantly, the one we choose to listen to and believe as fact.

We have all been on top of our game in some capacity.

Those sales keep coming in that honeymoon period in a relationship.

The high college or school results come easy to you.

Life flows pretty great.

But what happens when all that stops?

What do we do? Do we become aware and understand change needs to happen and work harder than ever and accept it will take time?

Or is it easier to stay the same and blame everyone and everything else?

The examples we give to others and even our children are vital also.

After all, we are human.

Allowing them to see this and understand that sometimes even mam and dad mess up, but how we react is the real example.

Now I get it, and rightly so; every dad is his 12-year-old son's hero (as Ronaldo mentioned how his son was shocked that his club (employer) suspended the "best player in the world for three days, and how would they win without him?

Was his son told he had messed up, made a mistake, and disrespected his workmates, employers, and boss to receive this action?

This is the encouraging language and lessons we hope to educate the next generation.

But it starts with you. It begins with awareness, which sometimes is the hardest thing to find or admit.

That is the daily inner work, the lessons we learn, and the foundation to become better people.

Now to end, Ronaldo, for me, was (one of) the greatest footballers of the last decade and more, and I will be forever grateful for being able to witness his talent, but all great things come to an end sadly.

Sometimes we have to accept that all the hard work, all the trying, and even all the talent we possess isn't enough to make things succeed.

Robert De Niro, one of our greatest actors, has portrayed mafia bosses and hard men on our screens for years and is now doing more comedy roles. Top CEOs understand their fast-paced industry and take a back seat on the board to allow fresher, younger people to take the company forward. The hard part is accepting that awareness.

What can you become aware of this week that YOU need to change, not everyone else?

As always, thanks for reading,

Marcus.