I was a very successful athlete. Athletics is where I was able to shine as a youth. For as far back as I can remember, my identity was tied up in being a phenomenal athlete. I think this was partly genetic, partly being pushed by my parents, being given opportunities to participate and grow and largely due to trying to keep up with my brother who was also an athlete and three years older than me.
When I was a young girl, if you were to ask me, what I was going to be when I grew up I would tell you that I was going to be the first female player to play in the NHL. I really believed that it was possible. And when I was young, I was keeping up with the top male players, so I had no reason to think otherwise. But as I got older, the boys got stronger and taller and my dream changed. But that was okay. If you were to ask me at 11 years old, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you that I wanted to play for Team Canada’s Women’s Ice Hockey team in the Olympics. And for a while I had all the reinforcement that I needed to think that dream was possible. I was one of the top female players in my region and it felt like was on the track. But when I was around 16 years old I was invited to try out for the Ontario women’s hockey team and I did not make it. A devastating blow to my self-esteem. If you were to ask me after that, what I wanted to be when I grew up I would have said that I want to get a full athletic scholarship to a University in the USA.
Can you see the problem that was taking place? While some of my childhood dreams, like most children’s dreams, were unrealistic, I was also learning to give up on dreams when they did not come easily and to only set goals for things that I thought I could easily accomplish. Setting reasonable, attainable goals is important, but if you only set goals that do not risk failure, that do not require hard work and effort you will not learn how to persevere. When I did not make the Ontario team, rather than looking at the situation and trying to figure out another way to the top, I lowered my expectations of myself. This might have been necessary at some point, but to give up on a dream at the first hurdle shows a lack of resilience.
Growing up, I only allowed myself to fully invest and really care about the things that I was good at. School was difficult for me, so I convinced myself that I did not care about it, being liked by everyone is impossible, so I pretended I did not care about that. But, being a top female hockey player was not hard for me. So I went all in on that. But the moment it started to become challenging, when I was playing against girls that challenged me, I started to shy away. Facing off against other talented players was an opportunity for me to grow, but it also would have required a lifestyle change and more commitment. That would have been hard, so I convinced myself that I was fine without being in the top tier. What a missed opportunity.
I think some of this “perfectionism” in me, my self-worth being so tied to my success and this fear of failing, comes genetically, or by nature. But I also think that I was not trained mentally to accept failure as part of the path to success. For me, failure was a reason to carve out a new path, I did not see it as an opportunity to develop skills to make it on the current path.
I have been thinking about how things could have been different for me. I am sure that there are many factors, but I think one factor was the expectations that were put on me. More specifically, how it was determined if I had a “good game”. When I was growing-up, in order to have played a “good game” I was expected to have played perfectly, or at least that was my perspective. I wonder how my self-esteem and ability to persevere in the face of adversity would have been different if my definition of a good game came from my own personal and honest reflection of hte game. If I had been given the opportunity to reflect on what went well and what were some areas to improve in. If instead of being made to feel like a failure for not being perfect I was accepted as an imperfect athlete (as all athletes are), then encouraged to accept the imperfections of my game to view them as an opportunity to grow.
If we think that we are perfect in our performance and we have no where to grow then we think that we have reach the highest version of ourselves in that realm. Whether that is in our sport, education, art, learning to be okay with having areas to improve on allows us to keep growing and it also helps us brace for the impact of failure, because we are no longer afraid to fail, we are afraid of having nothing else to improve.
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