I was missing something. “I want to be right, regardless of how long it takes to make the decision. How is that a weakness?”

“You’ll never defeat the opponent in the ring until you first defeat the fear in you,” Andre has told me many times over the last eight years. I can’t let fear win.

The moment you start to believe that your actions, your thoughts, and your decisions won’t make a difference in your destiny is the moment you’ve chosen to think like a victim instead of a champion.

“Mickey, you get to choose which voice you want to empower. The decision is yours. You need to tell yourself, again and again, ‘I have the power to create my destiny. The past is the past and failure is never permanent. My future starts today

They see someone else achieving great things and think those achievers must have something special—something they don’t have. Or, they blame luck—thinking life’s winners must have had all the lucky breaks. But the truth is, a lucky streak will only get you so far.

He doesn’t tell me to “prove it.” He doesn’t tell me to “earn it.” He tells me to “unleash it.”

“Here’s a simple fact of life: Most problems can be solved quickly by simply attacking them hard and adapting to whatever happens next. When problems arise, don’t sit back and passively hope they go away. Attack your problems with aggression. Aggressively find the solution. Attack and adapt to whatever is going on. Attack and adapt. Attack and

It’s the willingness to be wrong that allows you to make good decisions.”

I’m all too familiar with these feelings right before a fight. Fear gets loudest at these moments. I’ve heard fear screaming at me like this before every fight I’ve ever been in, regardless of who my opponent was—the ranked contenders with impeccable records and the journeyman fighters with losing records. I felt this fear before my amateur fights