The Upper Hand

Leveraging limitations to turn adversity into advantage

Chris Ruden

• Publisher: Next Chapter Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781989517505
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Winning The Upper Hand means to gain an advantage or control over a person or situation. The purpose of this book is not to put you in a winning position over another person. (Plot twist.) It's to give you The Upper Hand over yourself.This book gives you the tools you need to deal with the adversities you currently face and those you haven't faced yet. It all comes down to changing your mindset so you can consistently "win the moment in the moment." This book has the power to change your life. Spoiler: Things are about to get uncomfortable.

Concept Four:
Hardship isn’t the End of the World

At one point in his life, Eric Thomas was so down on his luck, he lived in an abandoned property and ate out of trash cans. Feeling very low, Eric spoke with a pastor who helped him to see that his voice was a gift—people tended to listen to him—and he should do something with that gift. Eric took the pastor’s advice to heart and developed his skill for speaking.

Today, Eric Thomas is one of the most influential speakers in the world, in terms of reach and performance. To go from being someone who was broke, at rock bottom, and eating out of trash cans, to coming out on top? That kind of success story doesn’t happen by chance.

Nobody knows their true strength if their strength hasn’t been tested. You can’t say you’re the strongest person in powerlifting if you’ve never lifted weights. You can’t say you’re the best quarterback if you’ve never played football. How do you know?

Untested strength is like Monopoly money . . . you can’t use it. That also applies to mental strength. There will undoubtedly be hardship in your life that will require you to use mental strength. Adversity is a universal language. That adversity becomes a test that, rather than pass or fail, is strength building or strength depleting.

Your mental strength will be tested, and that is a test you might not always pass. I’ve had dreams shattered when, at the time, it seemed like my whole world was wrapped up in them. Those events are a test of mental strength.

I don’t believe that winners never quit. I believe winners know when to quit. I fought to get into the military, knowing how hard it would be with a disability. I finally got through all of the hoops, but was then diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. That is a losing battle. You can’t get into the military with Type 1 Diabetes. I could have kept fighting, but I had to know when to switch lanes. I quit because I knew there was nothing I could do to change national policy. I’ve lost money in business endeavours I knew wouldn’t work out. I’ve lost relationships that I thought were guaranteed. I believe winners know when to change lanes, and that’s when new worlds start to open up.

Hardship happens to everyone. I’m not special because I have diabetes or because I’m disabled. Many people experience the same things. But not everyone experiences these things with my perspective. It’s my perspective that gives me the upper hand. And your perspective can give you the upper hand.

If you know you don’t have a fighting chance with the hardship you’re facing, cool. You get to give up. You get a pass.

But if you have any glimmer of hope, you do not have the right to let hardship be the end for you.

People play video games for the thrill of overcoming obstacles. Some people even pay money to sign up for obstacle courses, so they can go through something absolutely gruelling that has been strategically designed to break them. They get muddied and bruised and scraped and fall and punished for not completing the obstacles as intended. And they still smile for the picture at the end and maybe even sign up for another one.

Some people sign up to do escape rooms, where they pay to be locked in a damn room for an hour trying to find their way out. They invest all of their mental energy into looking for clues to find a way out of this scenario. No texting or social media or Netflix—just full focus on solving the problem at hand, at gaining the upper hand over this situation. We have to be just as eager to solve the mystery of the room as we are to finding solutions to our problems.

But, when it comes to our own problems, we do not give it our all. We spend the majority of our time wasting time wherever we choose to waste it, and then complain that we tried everything.

Why will people pay to go through hardship when they think it’s going to be fun (choosing that perspective) but when they actually go through struggle they didn’t pay for, they complain about it (also choosing that perspective)?

I’m not saying you should look at your hardships as fun, but, if you imagine hardship is a game, it might help you to shift perspective. The obstacle itself might not be fun (it likely isn’t), but what is fun is looking back and knowing that you conquered it. I can look back and say when I was diagnosed with diabetes, I thought of it as what it is: an incurable autoimmune disease I will have for the rest of my life. For me to conquer that obstacle, I had to let go of what I couldn’t control (the disease itself and curing it) and focus on what I could control (managing it and not letting it manage my life). And, in that way, I conquered an unconquerable condition.

If you’re participating in an obstacle course, and you come to your first challenge, do you look at it and say, “Oh. This is too hard, I quit.”? No. You think about your options . . . How am I going to do this? I can’t get around it. I can’t climb over it. I can’t dig under it. I can’t jump that high. I need to get to the next obstacle, so, what are my options? All I can do is take the punishment? Okay. What’s the punishment? Ten push-ups? Great. I will do ten push-ups and move on.

In life, we are way too likely to quit at the first obstacle.

Chris, life isn’t an obstacle course.

Fair enough, reader. Maybe life isn’t an obstacle course, but life is about choices. You will encounter a lot of obstacles in life (kind of like . . . an obstacle course), and you can only see what you choose to see. If you choose to see an obstacle as a miserable thing, it will be a miserable thing. If you choose to see an obstacle as a game, it will be a game.

I don’t care if you have fun or not; I just care that you get through the damn course.

I’m like you: human. I mess up. But I recognize that I am in control of how I look at a situation and that I have choices. It usually goes like this . . .

Damn, this isn’t good. Why am I spiralling? What are my options? What can I do in this situation?

If I’m in a situation where I have to do monkey bars, that is literally impossible for me. I have one hand. I cannot do monkey bars. But I can ask what the other options are and do something else, instead. What’s the punishment? I’ll cut my losses and do that.

In the real world, there might not be a pass. In the real world, you might have to deal with what you can’t control and focus on what you can control. Your “punishment” or task will be reframing the obstacle to serve your forward momentum toward success.

If it’s something you can’t do, focus on what you can do. If you have to pivot, pivot. When a global pandemic happens—an international, universal obstacle—everyone is forced to pivot. Lifestyles and mindsets are flexible. Regardless of the desired outcome, people have to work around what is, and not just live in a fantasy of how they wish things were.

Otherwise, I would be stuck looking at those monkey bars for years, waiting for something to change for me. But I’m not going to grow a new hand.

People get stuck looking at their obstacle, believing they can’t do it and complaining about it, instead of taking the temporary loss and moving on to make the further gain.

When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a fire truck (yes, a fire truck and not a firefighter). As I got older, I wanted to be a lawyer. If I based where I am now in life on the goals I had in my past, technically, I failed. I’m not a lawyer or a fire truck, to my surprise. We tend to let the shortcomings of our past desires influence our perceived level of success, not only now but indefinitely. Often, if people did not accomplish goals set in the past, they automatically apply that “coming up short” history to their future.

Some people stick to that narrative in their heads for so long that if it doesn’t work out how they imagined, life is over. Whether you think life has a plan for you or not, I don’t want to argue that. It’s your responsibility to do what you are going to do with the hand you were dealt.

Sir James Dyson failed 5,126 times before creating the bagless vacuum cleaner that led to an over 4 billion dollar net worth.

Drew Houston’s SAT prep business flopped, but then he went on to create DropBox.

Sara Blakely failed the LSAT twice and moved back in with her parents before creating Spanxx several years later.

Just know that failing is okay. Failing is normal.

There is a huge difference between failing and failure. Failing is a verb. It’s something you do, like stubbing your toe or tripping. It happens, and it might sting, and that’s completely okay. Failure is a noun. Failure is an identity. Failure is the idea that failing is as far as you’ll ever get, so you might as well quit.

Failing is ok. Becoming a failure is not. Not all who fail are failures, but by identifying yourself as a failure, you remove th...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• My Story
• Introduction
• Concept One: Focus on what you can control, not on what you can’t.
• Concept Two: We Build our Own Cages to be Less “You are Shit” and More “We are Shit.”
• Concept Three: Stop Touching the Hot Stove
• Concept Four: Hardship isn’t the End of the World
• Concept Five: Treat Yourself Like Your own Best Friend
• Concept Six: Have the Upper Hand
• About the Author
• The No BS Allowed List
• Rudenisms
• Next Chapter Press