I don’t know when it first started. I’m not sure how old I was or the first time I heard it. All I know is that once I heard it that first time it never left. Sometimes it’s not as loud as others but it’s always there. The voice that told me that getting cut from Varsity as a junior was only going to make me stronger. Or when it told me that I would get a basketball scholarship no matter what anyone else said. When I was running sprints and felt like quitting it told me to get mad and get through it. It came to me when I thought it wasn’t there or wasn’t paying attention anymore.
It let me know that coaching is what I needed to do, that my dreams were great but there was a bigger calling out there for me. During the season my team didn’t win a game I thought it left for sure but there it was when it was over telling me to get on the phone and recruit more players, go to more coaching clinics, and change my attitude. I had no idea if opening up my own business would ever work, but it didn’t care about that, it just cared about what steps I needed to take for it to come to fruition.
There’s a voice we have inside our heads. It’s very powerful. It’s the one that tells you either to work out or open the bag of Doritos. It says quit your job you don’t like for a better job, even if it’s not guaranteed that you’ll find one. When the voice is optimistic there’s no limit to what you can do, because the voice makes you feel that you can do anything you put your mind, heart, and soul into. When the voice is pessimistic the opposite occurs. Now you believe there’s nothing you can do. You don’t look for challenges, you can’t deal with adversity, and so on and so on.
“Hear what’s being said, especially when it’s your own voice urging you to get through the tough times”
I will not allow myself to break down. I will not allow myself to quit. I will not allow myself a second of self pity or self doubt. Instead I will do the exact opposite. If this mantra is repeated over and over in your head how could you fail? How could you wake up and not feel confident taking on the day?
There has been so many times in my life where the voice is what got me through the rough patches. Without thinking about it, I hear it when I start to feel overwhelmed or when I think it’s going to be impossible to do something. It takes a while to develop but once you do it’s something that can save your life. Over 30,000 Americans commit suicide every year. Where is their voice? What are they hearing? There hearing that its hopeless, that there’s nothing they can do to change their current situation, its telling them to quit and they do. If only their voice could convince them that their lives alone are a reason to stay on this earth.
For the past two weekends we have been holding tryouts for our travel basketball teams. Kids from as young as nine to as old as seventeen competed against other players to make our teams. Over 280 kids tried out but we could only keep about 180 of them. All I’ve been thinking about is the voices of the kids that didnt make the cut. What message is it saying to them? Is it saying try another sport? Is it saying that the people who evaluated them obviously don’t know what they’re talking about? Is it making them look at the kids who made the team and wonder how “they” made it and not them? Or has the voice already got them in the driveway shooting jumpshots. Maybe it told them that by next year they have to get better. I hope it’s the latter. I hope the same voice that I heard in high school telling me to get better is relaying the same message to them.
The best thing about the voice is you can control it. It’s up to you what messages you send yourself. If used right it can be a very powerful tool in your life. Listen to the messages you’re sending yourself, if all is well than keep doing what you’re doing, if not maybe it’s time to change your voice.
