Happy New Year! You know, it is an exciting time. Families can get together and talk about what they what to have happen in 2019. And you know what? I think it is a fabulous time to talk with our kids about the limitless possibilities we truly have.
One of the ways I like to first interact with young swimmers or young athletes or young students is to introduce the idea that if you had nothing to fear – and you knew success was inevitable – what would you do? How hard would you try? What kinds of things would you attempt?
I think as a family, I think as coaches, as mentors, as teachers, we need to reinforce the idea of trying to view life and the challenges that lie ahead of us as if we knew they were going to work out and in a way that fear was erased from the equation.
You know, there’s only one way to get through fear – straight through the front door. You just got to do it. So, I want to encourage our students, our swimmers, our children, to take that fear and know it is an alarm that is going to go off and shoot fireworks of excitement and possibility everywhere.
So, thinking about these ideas – we remove all the fear, act as if we knew it was going to work out, and then, the final and most important part, how would we behave? How would it affect the choices we make, the decisions we make, the commitments we make, and the effort we put in. I wish you all a happy new year, I look forward to seeing you, and I wish you all the success in the world.
