Leading into the Holidays, I thought to myself “what message do I want to send in my weekly Mental Toughness Tips email?”. Immediately, what came to me was the message of inspiration, that anything is possible, that what limits us only are those limitations we impose in our own mind.
Take Terry Fox for example: Diagnosed with bone cancer at the age of 22, he decided to run across Canada to raise money for Cancer research. It was an impossible feat by all standards, yet he decided to run, firm in his resolve that he’d complete the journey and raise a slew of money to help others. Little did he know that his legacy and mission would succeed him. To date, over $650 million has been raised for cancer through the yearly Terry Fox Run.
We don’t need to have tragedy to spark inspiration, but often we wait for that. What if we just made a choice: I chose to achieve my dream, I chose to do whatever it takes, I chose to push myself past what’s ‘possible’ in the traditional sense of the term? What would be available then?
I guarantee you that it is you that’s stopping yourself: not your coach, or that team that’s challenging you, or the referee, or the unfair decision that was made against you, or whatever. IT IS YOU! If you can reach down and find the sort of inspiration and motivation that sparked Terry Fox, or Angelo Wittis, or Eric LeGrand, or Jackie Mitchell (all names I did not know until I read this blog), there’s NOTHING you cannot do.
So please read this 9 Inspirational Sport Stories blog as inspirational for your own sport story and share with me what you discover. . . in Sport Psychology, we call this ‘Vicarious learning’, or learning through others examples and experiences. Learn from these examples, then go out and create your own inspirational sport story.
Looking forward to hearing all about it!