Underperformance Comes With Luggage
Underperforming comes with luggage. And it’s not a carry-on.
We (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 trudge.
Some of these items are our own.
Some items have been handed to us by others and are not ours to carry.
The 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’s 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 spilling 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 bag, we deny the weight.
Whether we acknowledge it or not - it’s fucking heavy.
Too many will complete their athletic journey and carry the very same luggage into their professional life and personal relationships. The athletic world is wrought with people who are navigating life trawling a distended 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 cram in more shit. 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.
We cling to the fear that addressing the baggage could 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 is hitched, even fleetingly, to an emotion, we lose clarity on who we actually are in that moment. Emotions, those dramatic houseguests with good intentions and awkwardly terrible timing, often drape themselves over our perception like velvet curtains on a dirty window.
Even if we pull back the curtains of emotion to allow the light in, the dirt that has collected on the window clouds the reality outside. All we can see is a smudged silhouette so we have to take out best guess as to what exactly is outside looking in.
Our true self, already a beautifully tangled paradox, is shrouded in complexity. So, of course, we default to operating in the false or quasi-self. And honestly, why wouldn’t we, it’s easier, safer, and frankly, much better at small talk.
Protection for ourselves or others, becomes a noble disguise. Self sacrifice sneaks in, applauded and misunderstood, as the currency of worthiness. But in the name of serving the world, we often abandon the one thing the world actually needs. Our true self. Unedited, unfiltered, unclouded by performance and pretense. 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. And perhaps we can unload some of the unnecessary luggage along the journey.