Book Review- The Flinch

The Flinch, by Julien Smith, is a free book I downloaded to my IPad. I like free, but I also never expect a whole lot when I get something free. I was definately mistaken. This is an excellent book and, knowing what I know now, I would gladly have paid for it.

Smith starts off talking about boxers and the thing that sets them apart from everyone else. Why is that some people become World Champions and the rest of us just watch it on Pay-for-View? Obviously, the fighter spends a lot of time training and preparing. Smith says that there is one supreme characteristic, however, that sets a great fighter apart from the rest of us mortals. The fighter has learned to master the “flinch.”

If someone throws a punch at your face you are going to flinch. It is in that flinching that the fight is lost. A fighter learns to master the flinch reflex. He knows that he is going to get punched in the face but keeps coming forward anyway.

This principle carrys over into life. How many of us have failed to take that big step because of the flinch? We were scared that we might fail so we have never started that business that we dreamed of. We never went back to school because we didn’t think we could balance one more thing.

The Flinch doesn’t try and sugar coat it. Yes, you might fail. Yes, you might get hurt. It is through our scars, though, that we learn and grow. “If you don’t test yourself, your don’t actually grow to your own limits. For you to map out this new world, you need to test it, and test what you’re capable of inside it. You need to make mistakes, resist the flinch, and feel the lessons that come with the process.”

What is it that makes you flinch? Why don’t you try and resist it and do that thing that you have held back from doing?