Next weekend is my 20th high school reunion. Yes, God help me, I am that old. :)
My friend Goi {Sheri} and I were emailing back and forth this week about the reunion, and life in general, when she told me about a girls' team she is coaching. She said she was frustrated because they were coming out playing like they had already lost, and she wasn't sure what to say to them.
This is what I wrote back to her:
I would use the quote by Carlos Castenada if I were you. He said “We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”
These kids can learn right now that they put as much effort into failing as they do into winning simply by the words they constantly tell themselves. It takes effort to tell yourself that you can’t do something. That you can’t win or you can’t do your best. It takes effort to decide to fail. And it takes the same effort to decide that they can try and they can do their best and enjoy the game and live the moment.
It’s all about which attitude they decide to put their effort into.
In the end, that’s all that matters. Because failing isn’t about falling down. Everyone falls down. Failing only happens to the people who decide not to get back up. So these kids can put their effort into falling down, staying down and being miserable - or they can put their effort into getting back up and being strong. The choice is theirs.
The ironic thing is that I could write this to her in a quick email conversation, but I was never able to write the blurb they asked me to submit detailing my life.
The blurb where I sum up the last twenty years and tell everyone about the life I now live.
But looking at this email tonight, I realized that I could have submitted this, out of context, and it would have summed my life up perfectly.
Because even though I now spend 24 hours a day laying in my bed, what I've spent the last 20 years doing is getting back up each time life knocked me down.
And it's what I plan to keep doing. Every day.