On October 31st, 2018, a basketball player named Derrick Rose, rose from the concrete for the second time. The NBA’s youngest MVP made his way back to the spotlight after he had a spontaneous career-high, 50-point game. Some might not see any of this as a big deal. However the reason a story as such got so much attention is not so much because an NBA player scored 50 points. It’s because this NBA player was Derrick Rose. This is the same player whose career seemed to have ended a few years ago when he tore his ACL. Since then, we never were able to see Rose rise back to the dominant point guard he once was. Instead, he became a laughing stock – the butt of every joke. Derrick Rose’ “youngest MVP” identity was stripped away from him and replaced with “the injury boy”, or “the bust”. I don’t know about any of you, but every now and then in between the laughing at all the jokes, I would stop for a moment and imagine how he must’ve felt. How was Derrick dealing with all of this – being a laughing stock of the league, and it wasn’t even your fault. You didn’t make a bad play or get into some cheating scandal. Your knee just gave out.

I could only imagine how much depression one could go through by being on the top of the world then getting kicked down to the bottom in one night. Thankfully, that wasn’t how the story ended. As conversations started to emerge about why Derrick should just retire, he kept working. As the jokes got funnier, he kept working. As his identity was stripped away, he kept working. On October 31st, 2018 all of Derrick’s hard work paid off. On that day, a rose bloomed for the second time.

Let’s talk about what it takes to be great. Among many things, it takes the ability to BLOCK OUT THE NOISE. We don’t know how well Derrick did this, but we know that if a person climbs back from a fall like he did, it wasn’t because he was reading hate mail routinely. At some point you have to decide that you will not care about what the jokesters and haters have to say. It will not help you. It will keep you from going where you want to go in life.

You will be surprised how many good things life can be produced once you have the right mindset. However, you can’t have the right mindset if you let everything in your head. Block out the hate, block out the noise. You decide when to stop, you decide when you’re done. Don’t regret quitting early. You might be quitting on your best performance.

**Addition: The rise of Social Media has brought humanity a lot of blessings – but came along with a whole lot of other crap that can lead to toxic habits. Un-Associated challenges you to take a day off social media and focus on what makes you the amazing person that you are. A day not long enough? Try a week. Just take some time off, okay? We’ll see ya when you get back :).**