DIE HARD

In life, you have to be like Bruce Willis in the movie, no matter what the odds are, never lie down and kiss canvas and refuse to get back up. Getting knocked down is part of life. How fast you get back up and back into the fight tells what kind of character and courage you have. Just tell yourself, you refuse to lose. Losing, is not an option. Those two affirmations should be programmed into your cpu using self hypnosis.

When somebody is running all over you in a pool game, say it, I refuse to lose, and then mount your own attack right back at the guy. Do back to him, what he is doing to you.

All you have to do is pull off one major comeback, pull one lost match out of the fire, then your cpu accepts it can be done and you will indeed then do it more in the future. You won’t save them all, but if you save some, that is really something. And these are the sweetest victories of them all.

When you get knocked down in life and come back, again you use that one as your strength to overcome the next one that comes along. Into everyone’s life, a little rain must fall. The losers get knocked down and they stay down and drop out of the race of life. The winners jump right back up and fight on. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. FL says, don’t be a girlie boy, be a man, stand up and fight on.

When I was a kid we all lived in fear of Polio. When there would be outbreaks our mothers would keep us home and not let us go swimming. Being crippled as a kid is a terrible thing to happen. Some died, many were totally crippled and were in iron lungs or in wheelchairs. Our president, FDR lost the total use of both legs, which was quite common.

I have been actually crippled four times in my life, and recovered from each one of them. I came back from each one of them because I refused to accept my sentence.

1952 - There are 58, 000 cases of polio in the United States, the most ever.
1953 - Amid continued "polio hysteria," there are 35, 000 cases of polio in the United States.
1955 - News of the successful vaccine trials is announced by Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. of the University of Michigan at a formal press conference held April 12 in Ann Arbor (the site where the research data from the field trials had been gathered and analyzed). A nationwide vaccination program is quickly started. Just before the vaccine arrived, I had the bad luck of catching polio.

Mind at that time was considered a mild case and I was lucky. But my right leg was now half the size of my left leg. After my recovery which took over a year, I was happy to be able to walk and ride my bike. But with one leg so little and weak, that meant my ability to play baseball and other sports was now compromised and I became a bench sitter. I kept working and running and it took 6 years to build that leg back up and to regain its normal strength.

When I was a senior in High School, I entered sports for the first time and joined the track and swim teams. But I did not stop; I continued to work out, joined a Karate dojo and began lifting weights. Soon both legs became very powerful and were 28” in diameter in the thighs and solid muscle. It took a solid decade of hard work to regain what I would have had normally. It showed me I could come back from anything, if I kept working at it and never gave up. I had horrible cramps and spasms in my right leg that would wake me up at night and they went on for 20 years and then one day, just went away.

In 1973 I broke my right hand 3 times in 3 weeks and it came out as a claw. It was broke in a fight, then in a ski accident, then in a fall off of a cliff. It’s a long story. I could no longer wrap it around a pool cue or a golf club. 2 full years of therapy finally built back that hand so is could close fully. Today, the middle finger will not close fully unless I force it and I do not use it on my pool grip for that reason. The hand has never been 100%, but I got it back good enough to make it work. They wanted to do surgery; I said no, I will work it out on my own.

In 1985 I was in a plane crash where I broke my back and was almost killed. I was flat on my back in bed for 6 months, could not work for over a year and spent most of that time in bed at home. I then spent years in therapy and in gyms building back my strength. It took 5 years to build back to anything close to what I once was. After that, as a senior citizen, I went out and broke all the power records in pool. They said if I did not have back surgery I would never walk again. I refused, they were wrong, my way worked.

In 1990 I blew out both Achilles tendons. I was hanging myself upside down in a gravity inverter for years to pull my back loose from the plane crash injuries. Eventually the strain on the tendons was too much and they both pulled loose. I was in such bad pain; I could barely walk and just hobbled around like a gimp. The success rate on surgery for this is terrible. I refused and again, a couple of years of therapy and gym training allowed me to make a full recovery.

These four were all serious debilitating injuries. Others were not so serious and easier to overcome, like when I broke 4 ribs on my right side in a fall. Lots of pain, you just have to gut through it all. In 2009 I blew out my right should rotor cuff playing Golf. I have been trying to avoid surgery. I have been spending months doing home therapy and lifting barbells. I have had so many injuries, I don’t need to go to sports therapists, I know as much about this as they do and all I need is a full gym and I’ll take it from there.

I have the shoulder now back to about 90% and should make close to a full recovery. What you learn is some injuries takes years to heal and to overcome. You must have patience and the belief you will beat it. You will return to normal. And never, give up.