Ups and Downs
What I learned from sports over the years and what I took from the ups and downs is more than I can ever imagine. I was at an all-time high to winning two league titles in my high school career. One In soccer and baseball. I also helped coach a team to win the league for my third medal so that was a special moment coaching. To the lows of losing in playoffs and losing in the championship game a few times to your rival.
Yes, it can be fun and very rewarding, but it can also be hard and not fun. In the end, I wouldn’t have changed anything. Sure, I would have wanted more wins and medals and for me personally to have played better throughout the years to help my team win more. But I think if done correctly you can learn from those losses just as much if not more than when you win.
Bidder Taste
Once you lose or lost in a big game. It sucks and it doesn’t taste good. At the time you might be thinking, man I wish I did better or did this or that instead. With that thinking and mindset, you’re not going to get much better next time and that attitude won’t help you learn more down the road. But what will help you to recover or maybe look at it with a better attitude is what If I could have done this instead? Maybe if I tried this approach or did this a little different and tweaked this or that. I need to go to practice and work on it so I don’t make the same mistake twice.
Pretty much the same wording and approach and thinking behind what happened. Yet the outlook of it and your mindset of it is completely different then playing the what if game. Don’t play the what if game, that doesn’t help you or anyone else. It just makes you look like a poor loser in some cases. You can’t change it now, all you can do is learn and do better next time.
Competitive Nature
From a young age, I developed a craft for being very competitive. I think it all started with seeing my sisters playing sports and watching sports in general. After a while, I hated to lose and wanted to win. I wanted to beat my sisters and everyone else I was playing with or against. I didn’t care what it was I wanted to win plain and simple.
Now with that attitude, there could be side effects of being very competitive. I hated losing as I said, but I wasn’t really a sore loser. Well, when I was younger I was but I got better. Winning just made me feel so much better and it put a smile on my face. It was like I had an edge over everyone else that I was playing against or I was going up against. It wasn’t my intention to think I was better than them or anything like that. I was just trying to win and well win in everything I was doing.
Real Life
Playing sports over the years helped me to grow into the competitor I am to this day. From playing basketball, baseball or soccer over the years. To playing video games with my friend’s, tennis with my dad whatever it was I wanted to win. Once I started to get better in those areas and realized oh I’m kind of good then it only got better or worse from there haha. School wasn’t a gift for me, but sports, on the other hand, was a gift I was definitely born with.
You can be competitive in anything. I used to be in sports or games, well I still am and probably always will be. I’m starting to transition my competitiveness from sports into life and the real world. See it doesn’t matter where you are in your life and what chapter you’re going through or finishing up.
New Opponent
I’m trying to enter a field that’s new to me. I have to learn and figure out what I’m doing and what I need to do to become the best author I can be. I need to put in the work, that could mean writing something every day or reading something every day to help me grow and get better. Just like in sports I went to practice every day or had games and we had to keep putting in the work as a team to get better.
That’s what I’m doing now, I’m laying the foundation and learning and growing and trying to get better every day now. I need to figure out what it will take to become a successful author. I want to be the best husband that I can be to my wife. The best son, brother, uncle and friend to everyone around me. Will I mess up and lose sometimes, of course, that will happen. But what makes that situation different or me different is what you do after you lose. Are you going to stay upset about it for a long period of time? Or are you going to be upset or think about what happened or what you did and move on and try and do better next time? It’s all on your outlook and how you see it playing out in front of you.
Now you can learn from anything, it doesn’t have to be from sports. For me personally, that’s where it all started for me. From a young age, I started to taste the sweet taste of winning and the ugly side to losing. I have definitely lost more than I have won in my life. Now with losing more than I have won, has only made me hungrier and more motivated to win and continue to do better every day.