Look how far you've come
#26 - you're better than you think
Hi there,
Another eventful week passes by. It’s been a busy week at school, with a motivational speaker coming in on Wednesday, giving us all a metaphorical ‘kick in the butt’. Cricket training also started up on Thursday, with surprisingly minimal signs of rust on my part.
I also had my braces tightened on Friday, my new orthodontist unhappy with how clean my teeth are. I’ll accept the criticism, guilty as charged, looking to work on it over the next 6 weeks. The exams are now just over 2 months away with my mocks starting in a week! The pressure is intensifying for sure.
Highlight of the week: club hockey training on Thursday. The weather was so much better than last time, when my fingers froze in the 3°C torture, which really does make a difference. But I seemed to be the best I’ve ever been, finding the space to call for good passes and felt like I was generally doing well in everything I did.
My mind was close to convincing me to flip a coin, to decide whether to go or not. I had a lot of work to do and I’d had cricket training just a couple of hours ago. I’m grateful for the resilient, disciplined Adi for thrusting myself into going.
At hockey, there was a new face, who was very negative indeed. Finding the training dauntingly difficult (to him), he was continually admonishing himself, lamenting about how bad he was. Others, rightfully, asked him to focus on the positive but maybe that played a part in me feeling like I wasn’t the worst there.
It may have been the universe thanking and rewarding me for taking the effort to go to Hockey but when everything fell into place, the dots connected into a wonderful experience.
It made me think back to last year, when I joined the club and came to training. How I found it difficult and challenging, a steep step up from the school B team practice we were doing. How embarrassed and out-of-place I felt as I repeatedly messed up and failed in front of everyone. Applying it to hockey, this was losing control of the ball, panicking and passing the ball away straight into an opponent’s stick and missing passes. But now I’ve improved in a big way, which was a warm and comforting thought.
We’re all forward-thinking human beings with complex, audacious goals, dreams and targets. We have been told that the past is the past, it can’t be changed and so we shouldn’t live in it. Some of you may even realise the power of not residing in the future, of which you don’t have direct control but you can influence with your actions today.
We are accustomed to noticing the gap between where we are and where we want to be. Whilst we should take this as a challenge, a project and something that needs to be defeated, conquered and achieved, it can stress us out, make us feel anxious, fearful and even doubtful. It is in these moments of feeling worthless, that you are, somehow, a useless human being who simply can’t attain that wish of yours, that it can be useful to turn around and look backwards.
Although I want to have 1000s of subscribers to the blog, I once had none. Everyone did. It is very satisfying to see that I’ve grown to have the number of people I do have reading what I have to say. It makes me feel proud. And there are so many things you can feel proud of.
You once couldn’t work out the area under a curve using the trapezium rule. You once couldn’t cook the tasty meal that you do. You once thought that the mountain you are now was a height too much to scale.
We’ve all improved, bettered and levelled up in something. Take a moment to pause and consider this. How you once couldn't do something but now you can. There’s three reasons you might do this:
To feel better about yourself - with no guilt. You achieved this. It is something you’ve done before. An example for me would be a Grade 9 in English Literature. Flashback a year ago and I’d have fallen flat on my face if I’d known I’d managed to get a 9.
To inspire yourself to do it again - this may be for someone who’s pulled something off before, and is trying to again. Whether it’s losing those ice creams and KFCs you’ve put on, or like me, trying to drink 2L water every day (my ‘thing’ for the month), there are many things you’ve done before…and you can do again. Take solace in that.
To laugh at yourself - this might be me at making an omelette. Last year, I would hopelessly fail at cracking the egg over the pan without causing a mess. Nowadays, if I’m in the mood for an inventive brekkie at the weekend, I whip out the pan, drizzle a bit of oil, summon my inner Michelin-level Muthukumar, and fry up a great egg.
There are things we want to do in life, objectives to meet, aspirations to realise. And if you aren’t sure whether you can, think back to the last time you did achieve something. How did that feel? How much had you improved? You’ve done it before. Let’s go out and do it again.
Book of the week 📖
Cashflow Quadrant has been dabbled into. Revision is in full tilt though.
Podcast of the week🎙️
Something in it for everyone, with countless real-life, logical examples
Article of the week📰
Everyone Is All Sorts of (Screwed) Up. And That’s Okay.
Comforting and true statement. No one has all the answers. We’re all figuring out in the ∞-d video game called life.
Quote of the week💬
“I really think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall.” - Serena Williams
Adi