My new bout with Tenacity

I lack tenacity but I’m aware of it now. What is this quality we use to define the most determined people? It’s like the relentlessness, the fortitude, the rapacious resolve to complete that operates outside of logic and common sense. People used to say I didn’t have common sense but actually I may have had too much of it like you. Too much common sense, I’m finding, renders the enterprising spirit impotent.

I grew up going to church like millions of other African-American kids with southern family roots and money was a peculiarly faceted subject that we usually avoided. It was that thing you needed but couldn’t be tenacious about and that’s where I learned to lack tenacity. I know how to compete athletically but when it came to the filthy lucre, that’s exactly how I saw it…as filthy and criminal. I still hear the voices, “Don’t let that money change you,” or “Don’t forget where you came from.” Have you seen where I come from? Who can forget that.

I bought lies about money fostered by a number of societal culprits that it would be counterproductive to name exclusively. But what I will say is that I’ve learned that I need a volatile fuel if I am to acquire and maintain tenacity when it comes to offering what I have to the world for the price that it’s worth. As much as poverty sours in my mouth, the taste is no match for the insecurities associated with money’s mythical ability to change me. I feared money, what it would do to me and the consequences of becoming its slave.

But today the fear is revisited and I’m more and more convinced that tenacity is not an option. For me it means turning my company into a lucrative endeavor that will support family and help build the resources that give people a chance to discover truth, namely athletes. I’m ashamed that I’ve not been committed to this in past years but nothing stimulates tenacity like the disappointment you feel when it’s both necessary and found lacking.