UFC 104: Yet Another Lesson for Bloggers

I know. What do MMA and blogging have in common? One is a violent sport in which two people bang their heads against each other. The other is you banging your head against the wall to come up with an idea for your next blog post. Not much in common as you would say. But there are real lessons to be learned from the sport of fighting. Not just for bloggers, but for anyone who wants to succeed in anything in life. No matter what you want to achieve in life, there’ll always be obstacles that you will have to overcome and fight through. What a better way to learn how to overcome obstacles than seeing fighters doing it on a daily basis.

In case you missed it, UFC 104 was a controversial event. There were a lot of blown calls, including a major one in the main event. But I am not here to tell you about the sport of MMA, rather about how a challenger failed to realize his dream by not being aggressive enough. That’s one of the biggest issues in the business world as well. Some people are too aggressive and some are too passive. In blogging, you can’t be passive or you’ll get nowhere. That’s why having a plan always helps. You need to have a goal and develop a strategy to achieve it. Sometimes, you may get lucky and get to places you never even dreamed you’d get to, but that doesn’t happen to often.

At UFC 104, the challenger came in and took it to the champion, none other than Machida the Karate Master. He had all the right moves and battered the champ throughout the fight. What he didn’t do was being aggressive enough to grab the belt in the end. Sure, the judges made a big mistake and awarded the fight to the champion. But the challenger and the way he went about his fight reminded of so many bloggers who work so hard towards their goal only to fail as soon as they get close. They either give up for various reasons or are not willing to take the final step to realize their dreams.

Taking risks is not for everyone, but you can’t expect big things without taking risks. Anybody who has achieved anything in life has had to take bold actions and risk once in a while. That’s the case with blogging as well. The good news is that the risks are not as high in the blogging world as they are in the fighting world. In the fighting world, you get knocked out whereas in the blogging world, you can always pick yourself up, learn from your mistakes, and be a better blogger for it.

UFC 104 proved me two things. No goal is unattainable no matter how bad the odds are. As long as you believe in what you do, have a plan, and work hard towards your achieving your goal, impossible is nothing. But more importantly, you have to want it all and take bold actions to achieve your goal. Being passive may get you half the way, but it won’t get you all the way. You don’t have to look past this recent MMA event to realize that.