There goes the greatest

IN my many years of being a trainer, one of the greatest challenges I have found among participants that attend my classes is the Identity crisis. People have not come to a fullness of who they really are and so cannot unleash the fullness of their potential. The result is that we have people that are insecure and unsure of the inherent abilities they have and in the process, denying not just themselves but the world of their gift and ultimately not fulfilling their purpose on earth. I asked a student in a class I was taking who he was and he said he was an accountant. I asked if that was all he could say about himself and he was wondering what I meant.

Your identity is the fact of being who you are or it is simply what a person is. Most people are quick to tell me their names when I ask but your identity goes beyond name. Why? This is because people could choose to call you something else apart from your name especially since that is all you are holding on to. Also, a name can be very transient as we have known people have had to change their names for varied reasons that range from religious beliefs, self-discovery, marriage and socialstatus. I was shocked to discover Tom Cruise and Whoopi Goldberg where not actually born with those names. Same thing with Muhammad Ali.

He was named Cassius Clay by his parents but chose to change his name to Muhammad Ali after joining the nation of Islam. As a teenager, he had started learning to box. He turned out to be greatest boxer of all time. If you called him the ‘Louisville Lip’, you won’t be wrong as the name was borne of the fact that he was always talking and where he was from. Some others refused to accept his new name and called him by his birth name. In all of this, a name most people accepted was what he called himself- The Greatest.

In and out of the ring you might choose to argue Muhammad Ali was indeed the greatest. The fighter, activist, actor, poet, philosopher. At a time when most boxers will remain calm and allow their managers do the talking, Ali was never one to shy away from the limelight.

Infact, he sought all the attention he could getin the process making himself a showbiz impresario. Part of his winning formula was taunting his opponents, before the match, during the match and sometimes after the match. He was every reporter’s delight and he was never one to shy away from expressing himself. In the ring he had his own style most times using a lot of psychology and emotional intelligence to defeat his opponents. Other times he was known to compose poems for his opponents before the fight sometimes telling them ahead which round he would knock them out.

ALSO SEE: Mohammad Ali: The last knockout 1942-2016

He had battled with Parkinson disease for decades and people erroneously believe it came on him because of his many years of taking punches to the head. Nothing can be farther from the truth. His death triggered an outpouring of affection and admiration from all over the world. Indeed one of the greatest had gone to rest. Even though the disease had had slowed his movements and impaired his speech, everybody dreaded this day will come.

Ali’s self-esteem and self-confidence would shoot through any rooftop. Of his sixty one fights, he was known to have lost only five and more than half his wins were by knockout punches.

He was never one to back down from a fight both in and out of the ring. He’ll be remembered as a man who stood for what he believed and was ready to damn the consequences of his actions or inactions. He spoke against inequality every time he got the chance, religious intolerance and war. At some point, he became a somewhat symbol for the black race and some people will say he was lucky not to have gone the way of Martin Luther King and Malcom X, people who toed the same line he did but paid with their lives.
I’ll leave you with some of his not-so popular quotes;

Leave everyday as though it were your last because someday you will be right.

The best way to make your dream come true is to wake up.

The man with no wings has imagination.