The Underdog.

Why is it that the underdog winning is a great story and what helps one win, let’s take a crack at that, shall we ?

How many times do you read about ‘the Cinderella story,’ the story of the underdog, the story of the ordinary human being, often subjected to cruelty and ignorance and neglect, who somehow triumphs?
– Kenneth Branagh

The other day, I was laying idle, in my bed, 3 AM in the morning. My parents were fast asleep, while I twisted and turned in bed, like the most uncomfortable person on earth. My brain was brimming with philosophy, because that’s the natural state of mind when you’re awake when you’re supposed to sleep.

Suddenly, I had this thought about a wrestler, who is always considered an underdog in all the bouts that he’s in. He’s always the crowd favorite, cheers blare as long as the guy is in the fight, and the cheers remain, regardless of the result of the bout. So I wondered, why is it that we root for the underdog always ? What is wrong with the franchise, the dynasty of the field ?

Or just for the sake of argument, is the case somewhat like this; we don’t particularly hate the dynasty, we just would love to see the underdog win. I think some of the readers might agree with this, some would refute it altogether, but I think that most of us love a great underdog story. One man (or woman) fighting through the odds and obstacle courses to get to the gold, being the the-end-all-be-all of their field. I’m going to take a crack at deciphering this life long existent code.

The human mind, unless trained proficiently, tends to wander towards the “grass is greener on the other side” psychology. If we take the time to peruse through our daily thinking patterns, we would find ourselves wondering more about the possible failures of our endeavors than their success. This possibility makes us an underdog in our own minds. And we love that high, don’t we ? In the moment, that visual of us, triumphing over everything and everyone in our way, is a glorious one. We see it, clear as day. But with time, and possible progression of our works, something happens. Reality hits (and boy does it hit hard!), and we start to see that the obstacles we planned on breezing through while being the visual conqueror of an underdog, start to look a little larger than they seemed before.

Let’s think about it, what changed? What changed between the vision and the reality? What changed between being the conquering underdog and the mess sitting at the desk, baffled with what hit him ? In one word, consistency. I’ll put this into a little perspective using two sentences.

1. Having that vision constantly in our head will give us some incentive for being the succeeding underdog. This incentive is the only force driving one underdog to one day becoming the dynasty, and the other to forget he ever dreamed of being at the finish line.
2. Consistently letting our mind wander into the negative side (I like to call it the other side for it to sound a little less ominous) will steer us to the other side, filled with guilt and self-loathing. At this point, all the deafening chants of “You deserve it!” fade into the dark, and all that is visible is the big wall, which is made up of all the obstacles.

I’m going to extrapolate a little here (well because it’s my blog and I can do that). In my mind, an underdog is not an underdog in his mind while he is en route to the holy grail of his area of expertise. A wrestling underdog doesn’t doubt his wrestling prowess while preparing for a title bout. A successful orator while beginning his journey is not worried about being booed of the stage while having that vision of him amidst crackling applause after his speech. So why not use this knowledge the next time we see ourselves getting high on that wave ?

Keeping that in mind, give yourself the opportunity of being the underdog. But don’t let that be a permanent state of mind. And being a human being, I can tell you, it could be a little challenging. But as the underdogs we are, we love a little challenge, don’t we ?

Thanks for reading. Peace !