Life, like sports, never gets easier, you just get better. My years of playing soccer and running track made me better. At the same time, it taught me a lot about life.
Here are the things I learned.
1. Have fun:
Sports date back more than 15,000 years ago. Some of the earliest recorded sports were wrestling and running. They call it playing sports for a reason. It’s fun. When you get two teams together and compete, it’s a called a game. It’s fun. I had more fun than I can remember playing sports.
I have a warning for when you become a parent. There are things that can take away from the pure joy of playing the game. When I was young, the thing that frustrated me the most was my dad yelling at me, or the team, from the sidelines. This happens every day on fields across America. I understand it. As parents you are passionate about your children. It flows out of you.
When I was on the field this was a distraction, it got me frustrated and upset. When I focused on the sidelines, I couldn’t focus on the game. Most of all, it zapped the fun out of the experience. I try to remember this and set a good example when you are on the field. My hope is that you enjoy every practice and game and that it fills you with pure joy.
2. Meet new people:
In 5th grade we moved to a new house. It was 15 minutes away from our old place and I didn’t know a soul. After joining my school’s soccer team, I needed to meet the other boys and get to know them.
It was hard to be in a situation where everyone knew each other, except me. As I’ve come to learn, this happens all the time in life. It happens when you go to college, start a new job, go on a sales call or when you move to a new neighborhood.
Meeting new people is an important skill. The good news is that I learned if you practice it, you’ll become better.
3. Practice
Since we’re on the topic, let’s talk about practice. When I wrestled in high school, we had these shirts made. They said “3 minutes of pain, for a lifetime of pride.”
In wrestling that is the length of the match. It is the longest, hardest, three minutes of your life. To stand a chance on the mat, we would practice for hours every day after school. The coaches would push us to the brink of exhaustion. Practice was hard.
Someone once said, “there is no glory in practice, but without practice, there is no glory.” In all my sports, and now in life, the more I practice, the more I prepare, the more likely I am to succeed.
4. Time management
Sports take a lot of time and focus. In high school, I always had a sport I was playing or practicing.
I’d get to school early in the morning and after a full day of classes head off to practice. After a few hours of practice, I would pack up and head home. By now it was 5 or 6 o’clock. After dinner, I would knock out my homework for the next day. I also worked part time jobs, helped out around the house and still made time for a few hobbies.
Sports can consume you. But, playing was a privilege. I knew that if I didn’t do well in school, I wouldn’t be able to play. I had to keep my priorities straight and juggle a lot of things competing for my time. This started when I was 14 and hasn’t changed 26 years later.
5. Discipline
One of the things I juggled during high school, was working out. I would go the gym and work through my routine. I went three days a week and focused on a different set of muscles each time.
The day I hated the most, was leg day. In my sports, strong legs were critical, but there is something about doing these exercises. They’re no fun.
When you work out, the goal is to get to failure. For me, I knew I did it right when I collapsed because my legs wouldn’t hold me anymore.
This is when I learned about discipline. Sticking with something that was painful and not fun, with the goal of being successful in my sport.
6. Health
Working out helped me succeed in sports, school and work. I was building a healthy body by playing. I had more energy to do the things that needed to get done. I almost never got sick. And because I was so focused on my sports goals, I paid close attention to what I was eating. I was careful not to put bad fuel into my body.
7. Teamwork
I played a lot of individual sports, like wrestling and pole vaulting. Soccer was my one traditional team sport.
We had some amazing players on that team. The best of the best. But that talent doesn’t matter, if you don’t play as a team.
This is what the coaches drilled into us, whether we knew it our not. When we played as a team, when we were in synch, we were unstoppable. Without that connection we were 11 players running around on a field, chasing a ball.
It takes talent and teamwork to win.
8. Winning
Winning is a reward. It’s what you get in return for practicing hard, having self-discipline and working as a team. Winning always gave me motivation to keep going through the same pain, so I could get the same result.
But, winning doesn’t guarantee anything. It doesn’t mean you will win the next match. In fact, it is sometimes harder that second time.
Every competition is hard fought. Each team puts in a lot of hours before the game. Unfortunately, one side has to win and one side has to lose.
We were always taught to be gracious, regardless of the outcome. We shook hands after every match and told the other side “good game.” We had respect for the other side and showed it with that small gesture.
9. Losing
You will lose. You will lose in sports and you will lose in life. It’s inevitable. Sports do a great job of teaching you how to lose.
When I lost at anything, I was always disappointed. I even got angry at myself, wishing I would have done more.
The good news is that there is always another chance. When I lost I would think about the mistakes I made and then set my mind to getting better.
Monday would come along and I would practice harder. Every loss was a lesson. If I wasn’t good enough to win on game day, then I knew I needed to work harder.
10. The enemy
Sports taught me who the real enemy was. It wasn’t the guy staring at me on the other side of the wrestling mat, it was the guy in the mirror.
We had a big wrestling match with a school across town. My friend moved from that school and knew the entire wrestling team, including the guy I was going to face. My friend said that “he was strong, one of the best on the team and pretty much unbeatable.”
Before every match, you have to weigh in next to your competition. I looked at this guy and all I saw were bulging muscles. “Ripped” is how you describe someone like this and I was confident he was going to rip my head off!
Somewhere between that moment and the match, I looked myself in the mirror and told myself I could win. I practiced hard. I was in great shape. I had to believe in myself.
The match started and as each second went on, I gained more confidence. I could do this. The second period started and I got him to the ground. This was my chance. A few seconds later, it was over. I pinned him and won!
11. Confidence
I’m lucky my opponent didn’t sense my fear that day. If he had, I would have lost for sure. Confidence is a funny thing. When you project it, you can affect the other player. They might even become afraid.
There are a lot of examples where athletes won, in part, because they instilled fear into the competition.
There was a period of time when Tiger Woods did this. You knew if he was anywhere near the top of the leaderboard, he would win. Sure, he was better than most everyone else, but that’s not why. He would win because he had an edge. The other players were afraid. Tiger was bigger than life. He could do things no one had ever seen. This created fear and panic in the other players.
I never got to that level, but I always tried to play with confidence. By believing I would win, it increased my chances.
12. Competition
Competing is fun. Before every match, I would always be nervous. This told me I cared about what happened.
At some point, my adrenaline would get flowing. I wanted to test myself. Was I prepared? Did I train hard enough? The only way to know for sure was to compete.
When you are competing, there are times when it feels like it’s only you and the other team. You might have screaming fans and coaches all around you, but somehow you can’t hear them. The only thing that exists is the game.
I always took this as a sign that I was doing things right. I cared about the game and that gave me intense focus.
13. Limits
Coaches taught me a lot. One of the biggest things I learned is that I could always do more than I thought possible. One more pushup, one more lap, one more jump. It didn’t matter what it was, the coaches knew every one of us had more to give.
By pushing beyond our limits in practice, we could go beyond them in a game. Often times, this was the difference between winning and losing.
14. Listening
Coaches taught me much more than how to save a shot or make a jump. They also taught me how to listen.
In sports, you realize coaches know more than you do, so you listen. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ll be running laps (not that I would know from experience).
Somehow, in life we start to lose this skill, I know I did. I try to remind myself to view everyone as a coach. To hear them out, learn what I can and then get better.
The great thing about sports, is that you can play your entire life. Whatever it is you enjoy, a round of golf, a game of tennis or shooting hoops with friends. Go out and play!
This post is part of a series of letters to my kids. My goal is to reflect on and capture as many life lessons as possible. Here is the current list I am working from.
