Athletes around the world over fit very nicely with the Type A personality definition, such as being impatient, highly competitive, hostile and aggressive(??), and incapable of relaxation. A very familiar ring for many, I'm sure, which makes two key ingredients of sport rather ironic...patience and persistence. After all, who wants to wait around when you're trying to take on and beat the world?!?!
Patience and persistence are ideal bedfellows - they need each other - and without them you'll never reach your potential.
Patience is the ability to wait with a calm feeling for something you want desperately. It's an area that many of us really struggle with, but improve as we get older...which is experience. As kids, it's hard to see past the here and now; to see the forest for the trees. You know the saying...if only I knew then what I know now...it would all be different (or would it?).
And it can frustrate you to tears, like having to wait until you're 18 to drive a car (or drink!!) or in my case feeling like Im going nowhere with my swimming or training. The lesson of patience, and the sense of perspective that comes with it, is one that can only truly be learned over time. That's what patience is, allowing the passage of time to unfold so all the variables can play themselves out...even if the end result is the same as you predicted. Learning takes time. Hasten slowly.
Patience is realising that the process of improvement and development takes time, repeating the big and little things over and over and over, each time making a micro-improvement on the previous time. Patience in sports also plays out in competition, in being the steady pace tortoise and not the hare that burns out before the end. Patience allows you to forsee what might happen, and take pre-emptive actions.
Persistence is having the drive to just keep on doing it, overcoming the roadblocks and detours in pursuit of your goal. Persistence can overcome it. If you simply can't figure out how to quite do something, can't recognise when it is time to quit time to accept that you haven't got a chance. The ability to, no matter what the disappointment or set back, to continue to move forward one step at a time is, perhaps more then anything in this sport of triathlon and in life, an absolute requirement.
So how do you develop persistence and patience? Well the same way you develop as an athlete/person; practice. You make yourself wait and accept waiting. You make yourself go out the door for those miles when your tired, when it's raining, when it's late at night, when it's zero, when it's snowing. No matter what, and each individual time is a victory. You are going to miss days, you are going to lose. But then somewhere down the line you will think back and realise you can't remember the last time you didn't get out the door, then as Emil Zatopek said "Motivation is no longer a problem."
So the next time you have a crappy race or training session and then have to get up for a session the next day it's raining, remember we have all had these days and the champions are made right there on the mornings when you want nothing more then to sleep a little longer. Or out in the storm and coldness where no one is about.
It has been well said, "Hold on; Hold Fast; Hold Out. Patience is a genius". Be a genius. Be patient.
"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience" -Ralph Waldo Emerson-
Yuen
No comments:
Post a Comment