Everyone wants the doors of opportunity to open. But how many people are actually prepared for what it will take to walk through them once they do?
The most exciting opportunities put you on the hook to elevate your game. The work is only just beginning when a new door opens and an opportunity presents itself.
At the start of the year, I pivoted from owning a gym and coaching strength and endurance in person to moving my business, Wild Dog Athletics, entirely online and only providing coaching and programming remotely. Even though I was 100% confident in my decision, I found myself feeling a little fear and uncertainty around losing what I had always considered to be one of my coaching “superpowers” – my ability to connect and relate to others.
Putting effort into cultivating a personal relationship with each athlete I work with has long been foundational to my coaching philosophy. While this wouldn’t change as I moved online, I was concerned about the organic opportunities for connection and bonding that would be lost when I was no longer seeing an athlete in person on a weekly basis.
As I moved forward, I realized that not only was this fear unfounded as I came up with new ways to stay connected from afar – but that I could also replace my fear with curiosity. How would my “superpower(s)” evolve in the next iteration of Wild Dog Athletics? What new potential would I discover? How would I be able to serve others in completely new ways?
I didn’t have to deny that things were changing to escape my fear – I had to embrace that things were changing because it’s precisely through change and uncertainty that new possibilities make themselves known. That’s not something to be afraid of, that’s something to celebrate.
When things change, you can either take the perspective of everything you stand to lose or take the perspective of everything you have to gain. Which perspective will you choose as we enter the second quarter of the year?
Muscles will stiffen in response to unstable joints, as a way of preventing us from moving into potentially harmful ranges of motion.This pattern repeats itself when we emotionally stiffen in response to life’s inherent instability.
We fear change, so we resist it through our thoughts and our actions. It feels like we’re protecting ourselves and maintaining control by doing so, but just like the discomfort that comes from muscles stiffening around an unstable joint, all we end up doing is creating more pain for ourselves.
What big or small changes are you stiffening against, and creating more pain for yourself by doing so? What would it look like to think and act in a way that accepts those changes instead?
Life is dynamic and ever-changing. We can choose to resist it and stiffen against it, or we can choose to accept it and move with it – opening ourselves up to new experiences and unimagined possibilities as a result.
Friction creates traction and traction is necessary for propelling forward. Have you ever tried to run or walk on snow and ice? Without enough friction between the sole of your shoe and the ground, it’s almost impossible to push off without your foot slipping backward and away from you. The power of your gait becomes limited, and moving forward happens slowly and gingerly.
We often resist and resent the challenges that show up in our lives without realizing that the friction they create can provide the necessary traction for propelling us forward.
What challenges have you endured in the past that in hindsight you can acknowledge led to a larger lesson or greater growth? Reflect on this now and as you face new challenges in the future. Doing so can be a reminder of your ability to endure, and of the possible meaning to be discovered if you keep moving forward.
The beauty of life is that you can start over as many times as you want. There is no limit to how many chances you can give yourself to change.
What second, third, fourth, or tenth chance to change will give yourself this week?
When I first started swimming on a local masters team I learned very quickly that focusing on what someone else was doing in their lane – how fast they were swimming or how many laps they were doing – distracted me from my own pursuit of getting better. In an effort to try to keep up with the person next to me I would swim frantically and lose control of my technique which obviously didn’t help me swim any faster and only reinforced bad habits. It took a lot of discipline to learn how to focus on my own lane and trust that with patience and intentional effort the rest would follow.
How often do you get distracted by what someone else is doing in their lane? It’s easy to get caught up in what other people are doing and where you feel like you’re falling short. But this type of comparison only leads to rushing the process and frantic decision making which will slow your progress in the long term. To stay focused on your own lane is to do the hard thing of accepting the part of the process you’re in and seeking satisfaction in the work itself.
Some days it feels like I was born to be doing what I’m doing, and some days it feels like I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve come to understand this as a result of being at the intersection of what excites me and what challenges me. The intersection of “I can do this” with “I still have so much left to learn.”
I think this is exactly where we should want to be. I think we should count ourselves lucky every time we find ourselves at this intersection. Passion without problems will lead to complacency, and problems without passion will lead to misery. But to have the push and pull of both in what we’re pursuing is a recipe for growth and fulfillment.
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