Blog

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog. I had plenty of thoughts I wanted to share but whenever last year’s competition season came around I was mentally STRESSED OUT.

I thought a new coach by my side, a new environment, a new training group and a different kind of training would be enough to make me a different athlete, well even a different person.

I was wrong. I won’t lie I had the toughest time of my entire life. I usually am a person who needs peace and harmony. Every single little fight is getting me out of inner balance. And last year been packed with fights. Fights regarding my visa, fights with my coach and other different characters, fights with sports officials, … I felt I got threatened unfair, I thought I am right and they are wrong.

The years before my move I had to experience some losses. Losses in sports, losses in private life and I felt stuck. That’s why I moved to the states, started a new life in a new environment and expected to find happiness again. The problem was being emotionally stuck won’t get solved by moving places. While you put your good experiences in your pocket, we put the bad ones in our heart. It goes to our heads and is eating us up piece by piece. Losses never leave us the same.

Yes, moving helped me walk away from things and people, which obviously didn’t make me happy, but being somewhere else I still was the same person and this was actually the bigger problem. The old problems disappeared but new ones came up. I am not proud of this but I have to admit I was spending hours cussing and complaining about how life is unfair and how hard my situation is. But soon I figured out this first of all won’t get me anywhere and second of all won’t make me any happier or a better athlete.

Training here made me improve, actually made me improve a lot. People started talking about why. Sure my training was different. And sure I wasn’t working 45 hours next to my training so I could focus on my sports. On the other hand, we have difficult training facilities, I do not have any access to physiotherapy or sports doctors and my funding got cut. So what made me run faster and jump that much further?

I am now able to name it: I made a mental transformation. My coach isn’t just a coach to me, he is a mentor. In his very own (and often hard) way, he made me change my attitude. He taught me how to move on. Win and forget, lose and forget. If you win to take the confidence out of it, if you lose take it as an opportunity to learn.

Stop worrying about what other people think. The most important person in your life is you. So the most important opinion about yourself is the one from yourself. Let all your opponent get caught up in other people opinions, but not you. “Show me a guy who is afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time.”(Lou Brock) I was one of these guys. I cared so much about how things I do or wear make me look like instead of doing what I believe in and what I feel good about. You can try to please all the people around you but you will never succeed. I promise they will find things to dislike and make you feel small.

But stop making yourself small. Each and every single time you judge yourself you break your own heart. Be patient with yourself, just as patient as you would be with your best friend. Nobody is perfect and life is a succession of losses. Take them as they come and do not allow them to build up. The sooner you face them, the sooner you get the weight of your chest. One little failure often is an easy lesson but once you start making an inner staple of failures the combined weight may cause you to break.

I improved because I believe in myself and in what I do. I trust my coach and the progress. I am good to myself just as good I am to my loved ones. I set myself priorities and I try to stick to them. I am working hard, in training but also mentally. This new life and often difficult situation made me grow and learn. I am not there yet but I am on my way to get a better athlete and a better person cause I love myself and I love what I do.