We love Batman. So much so that we watched The Dark Knight Returns three times before we got our fix! The best part about Batman is that he is completely human. He could be anyone. Maybe you? Or me? Maybe I am The Batman? 😉
As we completely saturated ourselves with Batman over the past week, I noticed three powerful lessons that we can all glean from Bruce Wayne that can improve our super hero-ess lives!
[SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen the movie & plan to, forget reading this! I may spoil some of the fun for you]
3. Bruce Wayne prizes nutrition.
In all three movies, Bruce starts his day with a green drink. Green drinks are basically concentrated sources of vitamins and minerals from veggies (and possibly fruit), especially leafy greens.
With my private clients, I don’t recommend they start the day with green drinks or green smoothies. In my raw food days, I started every morning with a green lemonade and a trip to the bathroom. It also left me hungry within an hour because of the high sugar content found in most green drinks.
Instead, I recommend eating a serving of vegetables with every meal following my Jump-Start Formula (click here to access my proprietary food formula, as my gift). If you want to make a green drink, go for it, but I highly recommend laying off the fruits and drinking it plain. I also highly recommend eating some sort of healthy fat along with it so you’ll actually absorb the fat-soluble vitamins found in leafy greens that are vital to your health.
Bruce’s success is a direct function of his nutrition. There’s no way a body like that can take such brutal beatings and bounce back without optimal nutrition.
The lesson: Real food makes you feel & perform like a superhero. (click here to tweet this)
2. Bruce Wayne is resilient.
Bane broke Bruce… literally. When Bane broke Bruce’s back, flew him halfway across the world, and threw him in a hopeless pit, all seems completely lost. He hit bottom. And although he wallowed for a time, he rose again, stronger.
Life is hard. Struggles and suffering are a part of life. Some of us experience more than others, but the fact is that we all have a choice as to how we will react to what life throws us.
Sometimes, we are so down, so depressed, so overwhelmed that we cannot make the jump, we cannot see hope, we cannot imagine anything different from our present suffering. I know because I’ve been there. To cope with my buried baggage of childhood sexual abuse as a teen, I turned to drugs, sex, and alcohol to escape the pain. After I cleaned up, I returned to college and began my healing with 4 months of intense counseling. Life was great and I had a mountaintop year. But the following summer, I made some poor decisions. I regressed and spiraled down into the darkest pit of my life. There was no hope, only darkness and pain.
Like Bruce, I wallowed for a bit. But the truth is that there is never no hope. ‘No hope’ is an individual choice. During this dark time, I isolated myself from the people who loved me and dwelled on the past, on what was and what would no longer be. How far I had fallen! The fear of death in my current position motivated me to keep trying, hanging in there, climbing, whether I felt like it or not.
Bruce began training and preparing while he still lived in the bottom of the pit. I, too, kept training and preparing for rising again in spite of the fact that I still lived in the bottom of my despair. And my preparation wasn’t necessarily anything special, but simply doing the next right step, all throughout the day. It was the mundane right things that held my sanity together AND laid the foundation for the jump.
And Bruce does make the jump. To rise again. I, too, was raised up again, though I don’t remember the exact jump. But after five months of pure darkness, I awakened, met my future husband, and the rest is history!
There is always hope. Always a way out. Always a new tomorrow. I love Bruce’s resilient nature and his never-give-up attitude. We are often on the brink of our greatest success at the moment of our biggest fall. But it’s only the people who rise again who realize it!
The lesson: Struggles can break us. Or build us. (click here to tweet this)
1. Bruce Wayne shares his gifts.
Bruce Wayne shares his gifts with others. Instead of bottling up his gifts, talent, and training, Bruce gives of himself to his city, Gotham, as Batman.
We think we need lots of money or resources to be useful and effective, but all the world wants is for us to be ourselves and share our gifts. Maybe you’re a great encourager, mother, sister, brother, speaker, friend, listener, singer, writer, or cook. Whatever you enjoy and do well, share it with the world! You’re world might be your family or an audience of thousands, but they desperately need your unique gifts and talents.
When we refuse to share our gifts and bottle them up inside, we are being very stingy and wasting our unique blessings from God. There’s this parable in the Bible about a king who gives each of three servants a sum of money before leaving to travel. When he returns, he calls on his servants to check on his money. The first servant invested his money and multiplied it 10x! The second servant also invested and multiplied his sum 5x! This pleased the king, who then rewarded these servants with more responsibility and blessings. But the last servant was scared, so he buried his money and did nothing with it. The king was very angry and took away the money he gave the last servant and gave it to the first two. Refusing to invest in ourselves, develop our talents and gifts, and then share them with the world is just like the last servant.
Yes, it is risky to share our gifts with others, as Bruce Wayne understood well. Because he shared his gifts as Batman, he then took the fall for a murdering Harvey Dent while Harvey Dent was elevated to saint-status in Gotham. Then, he is continually chased by the very people he is trying to help. Most of the great leaders of our age were also attacked and murdered for sharing themselves and their gifts (think Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., and Gandhi). But what would our world be like without them?
What will the world be like if you don’t share your gifts? (hint: a darker place)
But that’s not all. Bruce also passes on his legacy to Robin by telling him the coordinates to the bat cave. Because Bruce took the risk and shared himself with someone, he can rest assured that Gotham is being protected and taken care of.
The lesson: Sharing our gifts is the ultimate service & means of passing on our legacy. (click here to tweet this)
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Nourishing our bodies with optimal nutrition allows us to feel our best and perform at our highest level. It’s what fuels our minds, our resilience, and the level to which we feel like sharing our gifts. Approaching life with a never-give-up attitude allows us to keep doing the right things, even when we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. This is an act of faith made perfect through practice. Taking risks through sharing ourselves, our gifts, our talents, is the most effective way to contribue to the world and make a positive difference. When we put these things in place in our vitality journey, we too can live, serve, and perform like superheroes.
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