I have learned so much about myself and how I operate naturally. I now have tools to conquer certain situations, and have a lot better mindset overall.
As a recent high school graduate, these last four years of my life came with many hurdles and lessons to be learned. Throughout my years before that, I have always strived for high achievement no matter the task. I would constantly be challenging myself with activities people would not consider normal. To me as a younger kid I never thought of it that way. My thoughts quickly changed during my later middle school years. I began to make myself my own worst enemy. I was constantly critiquing myself, and the perfectionist personality was showing through.
I never realized how much this affected me until my first couple seasons of high school basketball. I was so caught up in my own thoughts I could not play anywhere near my highest level. I have always had a love for basketball for as a long as I can remember. I spent hours developing my game and crafting my skillset just for it to not be at its full potential. I would come home after games and feel miserable about myself. It would drag into the next game and start an unhealthy pattern. I have always been one to keep my thoughts to myself, especially ones like this. Although this was hitting me hard enough, I told my parents I needed to do something about it.
I remember coming home after games of being so caught up in my own thoughts that I wanted to quit. A sport I had loved, I had now hated. After this began to happen was when we reached out to Jamie. I have known Jamie all my life as he is married to my dads cousin. I felt at ease about talking with him since he was not a complete stranger. After the first talk, I had felt a lot of weight lifted off me just because I had kept so much of this in. It then became a battle against my own thoughts. Jamie would give me a mental game plan to go into games with. Just like anything else, I was not playing to my full potential the next game. This process took time.
It took me until my junior year to find my love back for the game of basketball. I was able to ease the perfectionist in me and play freely to the best of my abilities. It is what happens when you do not think so much. It is something that sounds so easy, yet it is very difficult. I continued to work with Jamie going into my senior season. I had now built a lot better connection with him, and we would and still do talk often about life. Now that I had found what it was like in my junior season did not mean it was gonna be like that every game.
During my senior season, Jamie would help me prep before every game. For me, the biggest thing was controlling my thoughts and keeping them in the right areas. As the season went along we tinkered with pregame routines to try to get me to my highest level. I am proud to say that my senior season was a huge turn around from my freshman and sophomore seasons. I had found my love for the game, as well as performing at a high level.
I continued to extend my mindset during the second semester of my senior year by taking a leadership class with Jamie. It was a class that directly correlated with how people think and we got to express our feelings openly. We had only a handful of people in our class so it made it easy to build trust and listen to each other. This class was something I could benefit from no matter where my mindset was. It gave me tools to take on life in the future, but I have to make sure I keep them sharp.
That has summed up my journey over these past four years. I have learned so much about myself and how I operate naturally. I now have tools to conquer certain situations, and have a lot better mindset overall. I never thought high school basketball was going to teach me so much about life, but it did. Almost all of my struggles in basketball can relate to other real life situations. Handling these struggles and learning how to overcome them will continue to help me in my future. As I move forward, I want to continue to improve my mindset everyday and remember it is ok to do what is right for yourself. Although my journey was not extravagant, there were so many lessons learned and I want to be able to share it to help others create hope for themselves in tough situations. My advice to anyone who reads this is learn to control your thoughts, once you can do this I believe this is how you achieve anything you want. When someone says something negative or alarming you are able to move directly past it and not let it wander around your mind. Remember, it can take time, and there will still be some bad days, it is just about how we react to those days.