I can still remember it as clear as day. I was sitting in the downstairs bedroom and crying my eyes out. The ceiling lights felt blinding and the books on the bookshelf were a blur of colors as I caught a glimpse of my dad, who was sitting across from me, and tried to explain to him just how much I hated swimming, how I couldn’t keep up in practice, how I was literally trying my best and coming up short, exhausted and defeated.
It was the beginning of freshman year in high school, and I’d just moved to a new school district and started my high school journey. Things were as scary as they were uncertain, and my parents decided to send me to the community swim club as a good way to exercise and meet other kids. So every week day after school, they’d drive me to our local community college, where I spent the next hour and a half suffering through one exhausting swim set after another.
The kids I swam with were practically fish – they’d been swimming their whole lives, having been sent to these swim clubs at a young age by their parents to swim day in and day out, rain or shine. And here I was, a kid whose entire swimming experience was made up of several summers’ worth of fun swim classes, and I was put in the same group, led by a particularly intense swim coach. These first few swim sessions were hell. I would be gasping my lungs out while getting lapped by the kids in my lane, over and over again.
After practice I could hardly move – I was physically exhausted beyond what words could describe. The mental strain was even worse. Everything felt foreign to me. No one would talk during practice, plus I was the new kid. The coach would be barking orders nonstop. All this finally led to my breakdown, and at the time I felt disdain that I was in this state.
These past few weeks at work, while in no way as bad as my high school club swim experience, have been a challenge. I’m in charge of a smaller project with a tight deadline and the expectation that I work with people in other departments who’ve been in the company much longer than I have. There have been times where I’ve felt frustrated, defeated even, for not knowing what exactly to do or wishing I had the experience or context to work out an issue or solve a problem. Like my swim experience, I realized that I’m once again at square one, slowly working my way back up.
That conversation with my dad and later on both my parents convinced me that I had to give it more time and to keep on trying. Even though I wasn’t particularly enamored by the idea of going back to practice, I forced myself to, at least until basketball season started. I tried to have a better mindset, one where I wouldn’t worry about others passing me all the time and would just focus on swimming and not stopping. I made it my goal to not stop in the middle of sets, as I had been doing, no matter how tired or defeated I felt.
I wish I could say that everything suddenly fell into place, but the fact was that it did not – life doesn’t work that way. It took many more years of swimming, and especially working hard and going full speed at practice, before I felt comfortable in the water, and started to enjoy it, even. What I realized was that the important thing was giving my 100%. It may not have been the absolute fastest – I was often still the slowest of any given swim club group I was part of – but it was my personal fastest and even though it hurt at least I was improving.
I never made CIF, but I did make the varsity swim team at my high school during sophomore year. I continued to swim during college, and I’m swimming about twice a week these days after work. Swimming has become something challenging in an enjoyable way – where I can test my limits and try different sets. Plus, it’s still one of the best all-around workouts around that I get.
So I guess the mentality that I developed from swimming – giving my all and not stopping – will be useful for this transitional period of starting work. I understand that there will always be a period of learning during any new undertaking, and that this period isn’t easy and doesn’t feel good, because I’m not yet at the point where I’m completely knowledgeable about everything that needs to be done. But I’ll continue to work at it, ignore the mental blocks, and just keep on going, failing over and over and getting back up each time a little stronger.
They say sports is an amazing way to learn about life and develop useful skills that go far beyond the pool, court, or field. I’m thankful that my parents sent me to swim practice during the start of high school, even when I didn’t have the motivation to do it, and that I was able to use my failures to not only improve my physical strength but also my mental fortitude.
Monkey, airplane, rocket at www.RandomTidbitsofThought.com.
