This past weekend, UFC lightweight Paul Felder was in a brawl of a fight against rising star Dan Hooker. It was an excellent showcase with both fighters showing toughness and tenacity they are known for. The fight made it to the final bell and the victor had to be determined using the judges’ scorecards. My personal scorecard scored the 3 rounds to 2 for Felder but unfortunately for the “Irish Dragon”, he came up short and lost the fight and his opportunity to receive a win bonus via split decision.
I was quite the furious MMA fan after that split-decision. Felder won the fight in my opinion. Afterward, I reflected that in life you can never put your total trust in someone completing a task for you properly. If you have an opportunity to do something right the first time, you have to take ownership and get it done yourself. Here are a few reasons why you should.
It’s Frustrating When an Opportunity Fall By The Way-Side Because Someone Screwed Up
Combat athletes always approach the ring or octagon with the goal in mind of finishing fights. A lot easier said than done. The saying is that you don’t want to leave it to the scorecards. You don’t want to leave your fate up to three men that probably never fought before and don’t care as much as you do about the outcome of the fight and its implications. A few weeks ago at UFC 247, the judges at ringside weren’t even watching the fight! These judges’ decisions mean food on the table or Christmas gifts under the tree for some of these fighters. It’s not fair.
In a more relatable situation, we all had group projects in school. Those group projects were supposably made to open up the communication of ideas and distribute workloads evenly. Wrong. Usually what happened was one individual taking more work than he or she needed to take because of “Jared the Pothead” couldn’t get his act together. That is a really frustrating experience to deal with. You shouldn’t have to drag someone along that doesn’t want to participate in the group.
Don’t let your opportunity go to waste because of someone not wanting to pull their end of the rope.
It’s Just Easier to Take an Opportunity in Your Hands
It is hard to convince someone to do something that they don’t want to do. That what separates a great influencer of people from a bad one. When people are tasked, they usually want to know “what I am getting out of this” because humans are really ego-centric organisms. Now, you can go over the top and try to manipulate that person to do something for you with strategies found in most books on how to influence others, or you can just say screw it and do it yourself.
That eliminates the hassle of dealing with extra weight on the chain. You can also probably do a better job at whatever you doing in the first place. Your initial goal of tasking someone was to make your life easier wasn’t it? Having to convince another adult to do a good job is never an ideal situation, to begin with. I am a huge stickler for doing things right the first time. Don’t accept mediocrity when it comes to your opportunity because they don’t come often enough.
In Paul Felder’s case, the 5th round of the fight was the highly contested round. His conditioning was there and clearly was damaging Hooker. “The Hangman” got a late-round takedown that sealed the victory in one of the hometown judges’ eyes. If Paul could of the bit down on his mouthpiece a little harder and landed the blow that put Hooker on his ass and finished him, there would be a totally different narrative we would be discussing today.
How Can You Take an Opportunity Into Your Own Hands?
There are only 24 hours in a day and only 7 days in a week. I think about how much my life would be different if we had 25 hour days. We need help getting the stuff we need to be done, done. We have to recruit the assistance of others in tasks we are confident they will be able to perform heartily.
If you are working on a marketing plan proposal for a client and you find yourself running out of time to create a mock calendar for email marketing, you might want to divide the remaining work to the email specialist on your team. Find someone who will take pride in the task that you want them to do. This will make your life easier because you will have a lot less to stress about trying to convince a slacker to do your job.
Be sure not to overwork yourself if you decide that you’re the only person on the face of the earth that can get the job done. This is when organizational skills will come into play. Don’t let yourself bite off more than you can chew because you’ll find yourself drowning in work which will reduce work quality across the board only adding to your headache. Don’t be afraid to say no or put something off when everything becomes too much. Paul Felder could have bitten down on his mouthpiece and went after the finish but that would have increased the odds of himself getting finished.
Conclusion
Relying too much on others is never a good thing. Sometimes you have to especially when you are in social environments. But every now and then don’t be afraid to take on an opportunity and finish it on your own. In Felder’s case, I wish he would have finished the fight because he is a well-deserving fighter and those judges weren’t worthy enough to be in the same building as him.
Find out my thoughts on examples of leadership in my last blog piece. Also, be sure to subscribe and be updated on when I publish next!
