So I want to start with a preamble to give a little context to the topic for today's blog post and the title I have chosen. I have had and continue to have a good and really a very good life. I have little to complain about. I am in great health ( if we discount the aches and pains related to my age), I have a great wife, a job I enjoy, I am financially secure and with retirement planned for within the next 5 years, all indicates I will be able to enjoy myself once I stop working. Like anyone, I have had some tougher moments in my marriage, I have had ups and downs in my life, moments of stress, disappointment, insecurity and doubts / questioning about decisions I have made. There have been moments of existential questioning and the wonderment of the path not taken. I have only experienced the loss of 4 close family members, an aunt and grandmother when I was in my early teens, a grandmother that lived with us during a majority of my childhood and teens who passed away in 2012 and my mother in law who passed away in 2018. I should be noted that I never met my grandfathers so never had to deal with their passing.
I have developed an ability and personality to deal with adversity, to manage stressful situations and to avoid getting caught up in drama that might occur with family, friends or in the workplace. Some might say I have developed a coping mechanism or a protective bubble to shield myself from dealing with adverse situations but the reality is that how I deal with change or adversity is what works for me. I have often written on this blog and shared with those around me how I have changed and grown over time throughout my adulthood to arrive at the person I am today. I different moments of my life, I have made conscientious choices to change. sometimes it might not have worked as hoped but overall, I can say I have more positives than negatives. It is often said that the only constant is change but why do so many people struggle with it so much? I can't speak for others, but I know for me, I have never feared change, on the contrary, I have often embraced change as an opportunity for growth, discovery and the chance to avoid falling into routines. In my work life, I have been a proponent of change, of thinking outside the box, embracing new ways of working. I have rarely sat back waiting to see the outcomes of change but rather stood directly in front suggesting that we can always find better solutions when we are open to change. As humans, we’re naturally drawn towards consistency. We feel safer with patterns. From an evolutionary perspective, if things stayed the same it meant we knew where we were getting our next meal from and that the locations we knew well were relatively safe. A change means the risk of going hungry or potential danger as we move into the unknown. For myself, throughout my adulthood, let's say from 1990 onward, there have been only two constants in my life, my spouse and my involvement in coaching. Since finishing university, I have have held 8 jobs ( so if we do the math, an average of 3.5 years per job although I have been in my current job for for almost 9 years and feel I am finally where I should be), lived in two residences, had 5 different vehicles, lost and made friendships, reconnected with former high school classmates and so on. So to the crux of today's post, " ..... and sometimes I struggle". What Do I struggle with ? The full sentence that I could have put in the title of this post and that would have captured the sentiment I am trying to convey and how I feel sometimes should probably have read something like " I don't miss the grind of coaching but I do miss being a coach.... and sometimes I struggle". I have shared my posts about my transition away from coaching, how I have dealt with retiring from coaching, and of course everything that coaching has meant to me and given me. For the most part, I have posted everything from a positive or optimistic point of view. And for the most part, I have been honest in sharing how I feel.... however, for the first time, I can say 7 months on from the end of my coaching career, I so sometimes struggle with the realization that I will never coach again. There is a tendency for people to focus on avoiding perceived losses or change that leads to the unknown, even at the cost of gaining something in the future. Many people stay in jobs or relationships they hate or dislike as there is a risk that the new situation could be worse. Change may be seen as a sign of impending threat if in the past it was associated with bad things happening, There becomes an expectation that when something unexpected happens it brings bad things along with it. However change can also bring benefits, freedom and happiness, but it’s often hard to see this, especially if the benefits are uncertain and unclear. It’s far more tempting to stick with the ‘concrete’, with what’s known about a current situation, even if it isn't great, rather than risk being in a new situation that could turn out worse. This concern is based on the assumption that we are a solid unchanging thing rather than something fluid. Life is a river not a rock. Those ‘concrete’ items are not actually so solid. Relationships, jobs and friendships are not isolated things that are unaffected by life. They need maintenance, they move, grow, change and develop. So again, I want to put in context that the "struggle" I occasional feel with accepting that coaching is over, is not some traumatic life altering situation. I don't want to compare myself to anyone with serious issues, concerns or problems. The simple fact is that for basically the entirety of my adulthood, coaching was very present and over time, it became a significant part of who I am and also in how I was perceived by many. I would often be introduced by people as "Jorge . manager of or responsible for but did you know he also coaches competitive soccer at Concordia ( or with the provincial team, etc) ?" It is interesting how the allure of conversation changes with the simple change of syntax from " I have been coaching ...." to " I coached" or " I used to coach ,,,," . I truly feel that my involvement in sport as a coach has defined the type of manager and even person I became. Coaching has played a big role in the value system and beliefs I aspire to. I have influenced how I see interpersonal interaction and view many of current society's issues. Coaching allowed me to meet some incredible people, live amazing experiences and see parts of the world I would never seen if not for coaching. So now, coaching is gone, what replaces it, and now what? I really don't miss the so called grind of coaching, The time to move on had arrived because many of the day to day responsibilities and tasks required to successfully be a coach became more like obligations than enjoyable activities. The don't miss that feeling of emptiness at the end of a season and the realization I had to start all over again in a few months. The disappointments of tough losses and the sleepless nights that often followed them as I replayed the game in my mind, the criticism and even character attacks from current and / or former players that you try and ignore but ultimately known are going on, the dread of feeling that I let my athletes down, these are among the things that I really do not miss about coaching. However, I do miss being " A Coach". I miss the excitement of game day, interacting with the athletes, watching them grow as athletes but as individuals. I miss having a front row seat during a game in the sport that I love. When I was coaching, those 90 minutes during a game where everything else stopped and it was all about that moment, managing the team in that game was all the mattered, that is something I miss. I miss traveling with " my team" so road games or preseason trips, the sharing of stories and living of moments. I certainly miss the friendships I made with colleagues and peers in coaching. And of course, I miss that sense of uniqueness or of being special that coaching afforded me. I always coached for the benefit of the athletes and not for personal recognition or gain but truth be told, coaching gave me a certain level of exposure and a public platform that I enjoyed. I think my struggle with accepting the end of coaching is also tied into the acceptance that I am getting older and as such, it is a chapter of my life that is closing. It is as if a small part of my personality is now gone and I won't find something to fill that void. Part of worrying about this change is being concerned that once the short term benefit of all the extra time wears off, I won't have the resources to cope with knowing I would have anything that will give me the experiences I got from coaching, or that the realization that coaching is done will really hit me and it will be bigger than I can handle. However, I am old enough and self-actualized enough that I can look back on my life and see many occasions where an unexpected change occurred, and I came out a better or stronger person. I guess it is simply an issue of being able to trust in myself and my own resilience, to see it as less of a problem. I guess a test is to ask myself if I honestly thought that coaching would never end or even if I wanted everything to be exactly the same in 10 years time. If I just pictured the grind part of coaching, I might feel stuck in a rut and would hope things had improved or changed in some way. However, if I couldn't know what something better would look like, I might simply have stayed in coaching, just because couldn't imagine not coaching as opposed to really still feeling the same passion about it. So if I go back to one a statement made near the top of this post, " only constant is change", a benefit of moving on and accepting change will be the discovery of some new great passion and a greater enjoyment of what coaching meant to me over the years, what I have right now and an exciting and optimistic view looking forward. Being fully aware and accepting that as rewarding and positive the coaching experience was for me while realizing the sooner or later it had to end will enableme to embrace the change now that it has happened. I guess in some ways, I might have been imagining a reality where somehow I get back into coaching, but given all the reflection I have made about my coaching career, if I started again, it could be like an aging retired athlete who returns the to the game a while after stopping hoping to relive his ( or her ) glories only to find it tarnishes the legacy and reputation. Now most of us are resistant to change. In general, I’ve yet to find a single person who is completely fine with changes in life, whether they be large or minute. We are resistant to change because it makes us uncomfortable; and no one wishes to revel in discomfort. However, aspects of our lives are going to change whether we like it or not. We age, lose loved ones, change jobs, get fired, etc. Nothing in our world will be consistent forever. Change, in general, is usually a struggle against every fiber of our being. We’d rather live comfortable, meaningful lives without any disruption to our daily routine. The great part about change, though, is our ability to learn and grow as a result of having to adapt. In fact, change is really the only thing we will ever experience on a consistent basis. So, while our struggles with change may seem cumbersome, we must accept and learn from them. Changes are consistent with the daily lives of everyone in the world. No one will live and die without experiencing plenty, if not many drastic changes during their existence. The only way to cope with my "struggle" is to embrace it, have very fond memories of what coaching has meant to me but to look forward with optimism and excitement. My grandmother ( the one who lived with me for most of my childhood) would sometimes tell me nothing else matters except how you feel at any given moment. Even well into her 90s, she had a strength about her that showed how she had dealt with many things in her life. So I will take a page of her book and go through life standing straight up and dealing with things as they happen......
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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