Accept or change?
At 17 years old, I wanted nothing more than to make the Olympics, and my sights were set on Decathlon.
With my sister at Junior Nationals in 1997. Back when I was positive I’d be heading to the Olympics in the Decathlon and just a few years before I realized I needed a big change.
When it came time to choose a school, I picked the University of Florida because it was one of the best track schools in the country. I figured that if I could make it there (as the saying goes), I could make it anywhere.
I walked in as a high school National Champion. But to say things didn’t go as planned would be a massive understatement.
My college sports career was abysmal. Every single year I found myself with another injury. You’d think that at a certain point the coaches must have been shaking their heads, thinking “why are we wasting a scholarship on this kid?”
And they actually did say that to me. In the middle of my senior year I was banned from the training room because I was taking up too much staff time while not being productive enough on the track.
My training cycle went like this: I’d show potential, and then get hurt. Show potential, get hurt. The cycle repeated itself for four years.
At the end of that four years, I had my degree — and yet another injury. So, I had a choice to make...
I could continue the cycle and drive myself into the ground until my Olympic dreams were well and truly dead. Or I could try something different.
Luckily, I’m stubborn as hell and when I really want something, quitting is not in my DNA.
If you know me (or if you’ve read my “pivot of a lifetime” story,) you know what happens next. While recovering from Tommy John surgery on my elbow, I decided maybe I could try a different sport. And so I wrote a letter to USA bobsled inquiring about requirements for the National Team. But the pivot was not just the chance in sport, but also in my change of mindset and how I approached my injuries.
(If you’re more into cartoons, you can watch my story in a collaboration I did with TED’s education wing, TED-Ed, How Two Decisions Led Me to Olympic Glory. Was honestly one of the most fun things I did post-medal and looking back it makes me really proud that the scared 22 year-old sitting on that couch was able to make those changes.)
Clearly, choosing to pivot changed my life in many ways. But of the many things it taught me, one of the biggest lessons was this:
When something isn’t working, we have a choice.
We can either accept things as they are, or we can do something different.
That single decision cleared up 98% of my problems for the next ten years. By making one big, tough decision (to pivot), I stopped struggling and started focusing my energy on my new goal.
I faced this same kind of fork in the road again years later, when I was facing down depression. At first I tried to keep my mental health issues to myself.
But after a while I once again had to make an uncomfortable decision: I could either continue as I was, letting my pride get in the way and keep drowning in depression, or I could get help and start to heal. When I chose the latter, I got better. I might not be here typing this right now if I didn’t.
We all face choices like this in our lives, and I don’t want to minimize how hard they can be. Neither of the above two examples were obvious to me at the time and both felt like I was going to need to really stretch myself to ensure a difference was made… and neither change made me think I was guaranteed to succeed.
I think about educators, for example, who are finding themselves “March tired” in October — because teaching is always hard, especially now. (For all you non-teachers out there, there’s this time in March for teachers where they’ve been at it for 6+ months and still have 2-3 months left. So they’re close to finishing the school year but still so far away. But right now, when you’re feeling burned out at the beginning of the race, something’s got to change.)
And look, sometimes accepting things as they are IS the answer. These choices are personal, and there are plenty of forces outside of our control.
But when we’re feeling beaten down or like we can’t win, we have to take a look around and decide which path we’re going to take. Will we take the path of least resistance, doing things the same way we’ve always done them - or will we try something different?
Maybe it’s my stubbornness, but of the two choices, I tend to pick the second one almost every time. How about you?
- Steve
