The Cost of Underperforming
Under performing comes with luggage. And it’s not a carry-on.
All of us [coaches, parents, athletes] tote this luggage replete with the history of our story. Dragging it from home to practice. Practice to home. Home to competition. Competition to home. It is tethered around our waist and we lug it everywhere we go. Pull it long enough and our walk will become a trudge without us knowing.
This luggage is stuffed full with items from our past. Items sealed in history, love, regret, success, failure, heartache, and all things in between.
Some of these items are our own.
Some items have been handed to us by others and are not ours to carry.
These gifted articles, occupying space in our soul, were an unkind gift given to us at some point in our story. In that moment of receiving we didn’t know how to refuse such an offering so we either accepted it’s shackles or we regifted to others. Either way we pass on the pain in hopes of providing some sliver of relief for ourself. It is a bittersweet cruelty.
Some of our bags are half empty, while others are so full we have to sit on the top just to zip it shut, stuffing items that have spilled over the edges back in as we go scraping our knuckles on the zipper. A foreshadowing of the pain to come if we continue jamming it all back in.
Not only do we justify having all of this in our bags, we deny the weight.
Whether we acknowledge it or not - it’s freaking heavy.
Too many will complete our athletic journey and carry the very same luggage into our professional life and personal relationships. Relationships are wrought with people who are navigating life hauling a distended trawl net. So every relationship we build comes with abundant layers of unhealed pain. Pain is one of an infinite number of filters we use to make sense of the world. We use filters to determine how we view ourselves, friends, family, co-workers, situations, circumstances, politics, religion, the process, our dreams, athletics, coaching, parenting… i.e. EVERYTHING.
Unless we open the luggage and unpack, it remains a fixture of our process. The only time most of us open the suitcase is to stuff more shit in it. We don’t dare examine, assess, and take the steps to remove some weight. Because we have operated this way for so long, we rationalize in a variety of ways.
We have fooled ourselves to believe it’s a necessary part of the process.
Addressing the baggage would make things worse so we avoid the assumptions of what will incur from the possible conflict.
In worst case scenarios - we use unhealed pain and emotions as fuel. The chip on your shoulder method.
When our identity, even momentarily, is tied to an emotion, we do not have a good grasp on who we are in that moment. Our true self is shrouded in complexity. Therefore it’s only logical we move toward operating in our false or quasi-self. Protection for ourself and/or those around us becomes paramount. Self sacrificial living becomes the way we convince ourself we are acting in service to the world. Protection, promotion and self sacrifice steer us away from who we truly are, clouding our identity.
Being able to process these emotions, feelings, senses, perceptions, and go-to modes of operation is crucial if we want to move through the world (competitive arenas included) toward a place of health.