Quotes About Overcoming

There was originally no plan in place for me to become WWE champion. It felt like I became the No. 1 contender out of nowhere. I call what I did forcing the results. I wasn't happy with my position. I was putting in the work, but I wasn't getting the results. I was going to force the result no matter what the cost.

I would be up until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning on nights I was facing a wall. Because when I walked into WWE, I was told I was going to be fired ten times because I'm the smallest guy around.

Even before I became a WWE Superstar, I was told I was never going to make it because I wasn't big enough. You know what I mean? I wasn't strong enough, I wasn't 6 foot 8.

My entire life, people have told me that I couldn't do certain things. They told me I couldn't go to college. They told me I couldn't go to Yale, Georgetown, couldn't end up doing much on Capitol Hill. Couldn't be party chair. And my response has always been, 'Watch me.'

It was a crazy series, 1960. The Yankees were predicted to beat us four straight. And on paper, we couldn't match them because they had better players. But we also had twenty-five guys that wanted to win, and we did everything we could to win.

When I got on tour in 2014, I was hitting a slice off the tee. No joke. Yeah, I had plenty of power, and I knew how to play the curve, but I was a tour player who was watching his tee shots peel 30, 40 yards to the right.

People said I had no heart, I was lackadaisical, the whole nine yards. But success is the best revenge, and I'm proving all of them wrong, even Evander Holyfield.

Just because I've got two prosthetic legs, yeah, I had to adapt in ways, but I've also become a lot stronger. It doesn't mean I'm at any disadvantage, really.

If anyone reads about my story, and says, 'Look, there's a guy that struggled with a lot of stuff that I am dealing with now, and he got through it,' then, yeah, I'd love that. If it helps one person, then that's great.

Being 5' 10, I was supposed to be too short to play college volleyball. So that gave me the hunger and the fire to say, Oh yeah? I'd just hit the crap out of the ball.

I was the kid that was the 199th pick that never had the body for it. People didn't think I'd play one year in the NFL, and now I'm going on my 17th year.

The mere fact that so many continue to rise, year after year, out of just such conditions as you may think are fatal to your advancement, ought to convince you that you also can conquer your environment.

There was a time when I was young and unemployed, struggling to start my career. During my A-Levels, I was hit by a car, which shattered my bones and left me confined to my bedroom for a year. Weirdly, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Even failures can turn into something positive if you just keep going. I wrote a television pilot called 'Head of the Family.' CBS didn't want it. It was considered a failure. But we reworked it. A year later, it became 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.'

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn't think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

Madam C.J. Walker was born in 1867, two years after the civil war ended. She was a daughter of a slave. She had no formal education. Both her parents died by the time she was seven. Yet, by the time she died in 1919 at age 51, she was one of the most successful businesswomen America had ever seen.

I was never the big leaper, the dunker, the long and athletic kid who looked the part of a traditional basketball star. Truth be told, I wasn't even considered a top guard coming out of my recruiting class.

I've had to deal with my tragedies, and how you cope with them is what life's all about. You can choose to let them consume you or choose not to.

Some people with awful cards can be successful because of how they deal with the tragedies they're handed, and that seems courageous to me.

If you let tragedies stop you along the way, then you're never going to grow as a person.

A lot of tragedy can befall us, but there's always something else; there's always hope.

No day-to-day mishaps or indignities can really compromise your sense of self after you've survived a deep tragedy.

You have to take the tragic and turn it to magic.

I am not someone who deserves to be dissected and analyzed like some tragic example of everything that can possibly go wrong for a professional athlete.