As a competitive player, I'm always thinking about what it would feel like to win a pro PPA tournament, or compete and win with the best on the MLP scene. You know those situational scenarios that you have in your own mind? The ones where you are doing something great and achieving what you have been working so hard to accomplish? Well, 90 percent of those situations in my head involve me going toe to toe with Ben John and countering that nasty backhand roll he has in his pocket. I'm a 4.5 player, so it almost seems laughable, right?
If I'm being realistic, those things will never happen for me. I'm 33 years old, not in that great of shape, and there are too many great players coming onto the pro scene that will make it very difficult for me to catch up. While my dreams and aspirations may seem almost impossible to reach, that doesn't mean that I'm not going to try. I could easily stay in a 4.0 - 4.5 skill range, never push myself and probably have a lot of success there, but at the end of the day I know I would rather fail big than achieve small.
For some of you, these numbers might be different. 4.5 might be a big goal for you to reach if you are currently playing at a 3.0 - 3.5 level. Don't worry about that. Pick a big goal for yourself and go for it. No matter where you are currently at, there are always goals that seem out of reach, but are very obtainable if you push yourself to be your best. It's easy to find a comfort space and feel good about staying there, but there are things that we learn and develop within ourselves when we go for something big...and that journey has very little to do with results.
Most of the students that I teach are in the 3.0-3.5 range. They are accomplishing excellent things on the court and are pushing themselves to get better. A large majority of them are winning medals at every event they enter. One of my goals for the ones I teach is to convince them that they can still get better and achieve higher goals, even when they have achieved a smaller goal they previously set. I'm always encouraging them to go for more. Some of them fear moving up because they know the probability of losing is much higher. Or they have gotten used to winning and want to just keep doing that. But here is the truth, when we think small, we fail small. Some of us find some comfort in that and can handle a small failure...so we decide to stay where we are and never think bigger.
If we think that maybe we want to go for a bigger goal, but never put ourselves in an uncomfortable position, we will never achieve big. Growth takes a lot of work and going for something large often comes with difficulty and failures along the way. I encourage you to not think about your goals in terms of wins and losses, look at your goals and justify going for them with 'becoming your best self' as your main motivator. How you push yourself, gain confidence in yourself and learn to believe in yourself is going to be greater than any medal you ever put around your neck. You may fail, you may succeed...just make sure you aren't selling yourself short! When you start thinking big in terms of your goals, you'll find that you DO have it within yourself to achieve greater things!
I have written my first e-book called Maximizing Your Private Lessons! <---Click here to purchase a copy and get my tips on how you can get better results during your instruction time! Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or to find out about my Video Analysis services to help you get your game in tip-top shape!