Our greatest enemy is often ourselves

I watched the end of the movie Soul Surfer with my children last night and felt so inspired by Bethany Hamilton that I had to write a blog about her. She is an amazing example of not letting any handicap, in every sense of the word, hold us back from achieving our dreams.
There was a line at the end that Bethany said, "Life is a lot like surfing. When you get caught in the impact zone you  need to get right back up because you never know what's over the next wave. And if you have faith, anything is possible. Anything at all."
Bethany lost her arm in a shark attack while out surfing one day. Despite losing her arm, she was determined to act the same way she did before losing it. She didn't believe she was any different  physically from the person she was before so she continued to act as if she had two arms. Shortly after losing her arm, she entered a regional and discovered just how different she was now that she had one arm. She found it difficult to surf in the way she used to know.
No matter how hard she tried or how determined she was to keep up with her competitors, she couldn't. Not only was she competing against everyone else, she found herself competing against her strongest foe - herself. She found herself swept up and being thrown around in wave after wave. She couldn't climb the waves. Nor could she get out of the impact zone. She was just lost in it. She lost the regional horribly and publicly. She was so humiliated that she decided she wasn't good enough to surf again so she became angry, wallowing in her pity. Feeling sorry for herself. Feeling like she was less than she was before so she gave in to her greatest foe - her ego telling her she was finished so she walked away from her dream. From her passion. From herself.
However what Bethany did not realise was that just by trying, she had in fact won. She just hadn't come first. She started getting fan mail from around the world from people who had various handicaps. They looked upon her as a hero. She started teaching children how to surf and another light went off in her head. The children taught her that surfing was not all about winning, it is about doing what she enjoys. Accepting that surfing was what she loved, she decided to become the best she could in spite of her limitations.
Once she embraced the fact that she was physically different from the person she was before the accident, she became mentally stronger than the Bethany she was before. She trained her body to be strong enough to compete with one arm. Her dad built her a surfboard that she could control better with one arm. She went back into the race and though she did not come first, she won more than first place. She proved to herself and everyone else that she was back and was fully capable of surfing with the best of them. Most importantly she won the battle against herself. She learned she was embracing more people than she ever had before she lost her arm. Just by being herself. She had won the battle against herself and in doing so had won the hearts of the world.
An important lesson to us all. Our greatest challenger is in fact ourselves. Once we can conquer our egos, we can conquer anything. Life isn't about coming first. It's about doing what we love no matter what.