Moving On

Thousands of people work incredibly hard, sometimes dedicating everyday of their life towards being the best at something, whether that be a sport, a career, a degree, doesn't really matter what it is, just that the something is a dream to them, and this motivates them to carry on trying and pushing themselves no matter what.

However, for all the thousands of people trying to improve, hundreds of people have to give up those dreams. But, what gets me the most is when dreams have to be abandoned due to physical differences in peoples bodies, meaning they are unable to reach the top because their unique shape causes physical constraints. Or, because someone comes to something later on in their life and are unable to catch up with the top players because they lack the experience of previous years.

These particular issues mainly apply to sports (because this is where I have come across these constraints). However good you think you might be or are told you are, whatever success you've managed in the past, you won't make the squads, you won't win those gold medals, you've simply run out of time to catch up, and the focus is now on the younger up and coming athletes. It's a difficult realisation to swallow.

Although you can reason with yourself, and say you're not training and competing just to win, but for the fun of it, the two do tend to come hand in hand to some extent. Obviously it's natural that if your hard work leads you to be successful, you are inspired and happy with the results and motivated to work harder and compete more.

Even when the winning/fun scenario is taken out of the equation, sometimes the fun can just go out of it, especially if you realise that you don't feel like your competing for yourself anymore, but to try and please someone else. You want to win and push yourself for the attention that winning and success brings, not to excel at your sport.

 It's not a nice feeling to realise you are trying to do well just to get the attention of someone else. It makes me feel like I'm a lesser person, that I desire the approval of another to make me feel better. I feel petty and silly and my pride definitely feels a bit bashed up.

I wanted to document these feelings whilst they were still fresh for me. This might not even make that much sense, but writing it all down has helped me to feel happier with where I've come to in my thinking about all of the above. I think I'm ready to move on to a better mind set and a happier sporting future.