I originally started this website and blog way back in 2009 just before my first experience with Team Canada at the World University Games as a way to post some pictures and share some stories... there were starts and stops in terms of content then in spring 2017, for a variety of reasons, I started blogging regularly ( and sometimes more so than others since). At first I blogged all about soccer and coaching pretty much but over time, as much for my own self awareness as for sharing with others, I would post some articles about myself as a person, some things and life experiences. This transition coincided with me getting to a point of my life where I can honestly say I felt myself getting older and for pretty much the first time in my life being much more self reflective about my life. Some of my preferred more personal posts both in terms of being my favorites or where I think I opened myself up more can be found via these links letter-to-my-younger-self.html letter-to-my-high-school-self.html an-open-letter-the-final-whistle-has-blown.html i-am-nobody-and-i-am-everybody.html apparently-i-might-just-be-a-low-key-nerd-or-some-i-am-told.html what-if-my-perception-of-myself-is-all-wrong.html Ok, so that's out of the way but so what? There is the saying that "there are two sides to every story and the truth lies somewhere in between". When it comes to self awareness and self-perception, I would think that the equivalent would be to say there are three branches of self-awareness, how we see ourselves, how we think others see us and how they actually do see us. As a second layer of complexity, I would add that for the second and third points, that can also depend on our interactions which different people and also and maybe most importantly, what we allow ourselves to project about ourselves to different people. Throughout my life, I think ( hope?) that I could objectively state that I have gone through different phases where in many ways my personality and my life philosophy has changed. A lot of people can say that " I am not the person today that I was as a teenager or young adult" . This can be meant in a positive or negative way. I can say it. This blog gave me a voice to express myself as being self-confident, even doing some self-promotion about how I gave back by being a coach, how I advocate for women's sports and women in sport, how I feel my experiences and knowledge can someone help or influence others. But I realize " WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP!" So let's get it out there, in the big scheme of things, I am a nobody, I haven't accomplished anything noteworthy, I haven't really helped anybody accomplish anything in their lives and I haven't made women's soccer any better than any of the other thousands of people who coach like I coached. Throughout my evolution as a person, from boy to man, from shy-introvert to confident well spoken, from apparently an A Type to a more mentor type manager, from a young coach to an experienced coach, from young to old, there were three statements that I always espoused as being so representative of myself;
Once again, "what of crap!". I was self-deprecating because I figured if I insulted myself first, others wouldn't. I have often been so worried about others perceptions that I spent so much time trying to adapt to what I thought others expected me to be like. And finally, yes I adapt well, I can scramble and improvise, keep my calm where others might be panicking, but in the end, but I have no idea of what I am good at. Now, let's be clear, saying I am a nobody in no way means that I think of myself as a loser, or as a failure. Far from it. Like most people, I have strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures. When you give too much credence to other people's opinions you're basically telling your true self to fuck-off. Like most people, my self-esteem is tied to the yo-yo of what other people think of me. When other people approve of me and my decisions? I feel great! When other people disapprove. I feel like crap. I got into leadership roles fairly young, in my mid 20s, both as a manager and as coach, two areas where being liked and being respected don't always go together. Where being liked and respected by some, automatically means being disliked for sure and often disliked and disrespected. I would like to think that I made most of the decisions over the years in both roles based on what was best for "the group" and not based on being popular or liked and certainly not for my own personal benefit.. but then again..... You end up becoming a slave to what other people want. Running around trying to please everyone with every decision. Never really tuning into your own needs. This people pleasing turns into you squashing your own desires. And contorting and molding yourself to fit the idea of what other people think you "should" be. You stop showing your whole personality. You stop feeling like you can be yourself. And you stop trusting your own judgment because you assume that other people know better! Have I lived a life that's NOT what I wanted or needed or truly desired? Have I only offered people a shell of what I think they'll like - never giving your friends, my athletes, my wife, my employees and my bosses an opportunity to truly know me and what I feel and want? It's a given, when you're worried about what other people think - it's a projection. You're projecting your own fears and your own internalized self-judgment onto other people. You're pinning on them what you yourself think. So when we take responsibility for letting go of other people's judgments we empower ourselves to stop being harsh and judgmental with ourselves too. Because ultimately they go hand-in-hand. When I left my job in the private sector to work in a school, I feared what everyone else would think. That somehow, I couldn't take it working in the field of business, dealing with the pressure and that I was choosing a cushy job. I figured I'd be preemptive, saying I was making a life choice, that it wasn't about having the big salary but about quality of life, about having more time to focus on my coaching. I was convinced that they'd reject my career choice and think I was crazy. But with hindsight, it probably turns out that was all in my head. That I was thinking others would think as a way to ignore the fact that maybe I wasn't able to deal with the pressure of working in business, that I was hiding from the truth. But here are two truths, probably for most people, they didn't care what I did or why. My life and its choices are just not that interesting to others and I was projecting what I thought about myself to others. So many of us stop ourselves from living our best lives because we fear embarrassment. We fear what other people might think of us if we speak up with an opinion that maybe isn't that of the majority around us. We fear what others if we dare step out of convention and do something that really makes us happy even if no one else can understand why. We worry what doing what really things is right will mean if the end results doesn't work out. The easy advise to give is put on your blinders. Stop looking at what everyone else is doing. Keep your eyes on your own paper. Seriously, everyone's journey is different. So no one's life will look the same. Often when we get lost in worrying about what everyone else thinks it's because we're existing in a state of perpetual comparison. We look at what everyone else is doing and think that unless we're doing similarly we failed. That my friends is human nature. I have spent year's saying that I did what I felt was right regardless of what others thought or did... but did I really, did my actions match my words ? Self-esteem is just that - esteem of the self. It's only something that we can give to ourselves. We can only grant ourselves self-esteem. No one else can give it to us. No one else can fill our cup with self-esteem. No one else can say "here you go, here's a bag of self-worth". That's not how it works. It has to come from the self. So one of the most successful ways to stop caring so much about what other people think is to start feeling really really great about yourself outside of what other people think of you. That way you no longer look externally to fill your cup and feel really good about yourself. You essentially disconnect yourself from that yo-yo where other people's opinions cause you to feel great or terrible about yourself because at the end of the day you feel fabulous about yourself regardless about what they think! It isn't easy, and it's a struggle and the first step might just be to tell yourself, I am full of crap, now change that! A lot of times we fear what other people think because we fear what they'll think if we fail. What will they think if I open my own business and then I'm not successful? What if when they look at my coaching record in terms of wins and losses, they see that over time, I lost more than I won. What if they focus on just the stats and not how I tried to help student-athlete's or ask them about their experiences, or , or or.... Fuck it - we all fail. But really, there is no such thing as failure. There's just learning! And there is just taking ownership of the things within our control. So here's my truth, I am a nobody who hasn't accomplished anything that is significant, but I am someone who tried as often as possible to be the best version of myself, to be supportive and helpful to those I truly cared about, who made mistakes, maybe many of them, but always got up and came back. I am someone who was and sometimes still is very insecure about my self-worth, but tried not to allow that to stop me from trying, trying to be a good boss, trying to be a good husband and friend and simply trying to be a good person. This is me, warts , flaws and all !
1 Comment
Theresa
3/30/2020 10:01:51 am
I applaud your honesty & transparency. I wept throughout as, aside from coaching, I could be the author. Have you ever heard the song "Killing Me softly with his words, telling my whole life...." I am dumbfounded.
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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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