Real-life high-impact moments are vital to learning and growing. Wait, no. I take that back … they’re required.
High-impact moments are required for learning and growing because when something is personally consequential, the learning becomes rich and meaningful. The learning will stay with me. It becomes a part of me. I don’t need flash cards to memorize it, or notes to refer back to… I’ve lived it.
This is why I love sports so much, and why soccer has such a special place in my heart.
Playing soccer is such a blast. As a young player, I had oodles of fun with it. But the thing is, I was also there pushing myself to be better. To grow and improve. To win each tackle, anticipate each play, and contribute to something greater than myself alone. After all, my team needed me (ahem: high-impact moments), and they believed in me to give it my all.
What’s so cool is that built right into this sport are zillions of moments that mattered to me personally. From quick and fleeting moments, like winning a 50/50 ball, completing a pass, beating my defender, to long-lasting moments like earning a starting spot on the varsity team as a freshman or hearing that sweet sound of the ball hitting the back of the net from my game-winning penalty kick. Big or small, they all mattered.
It’s really only now that I can look back and appreciate the person I’ve become as a result of those
high-impact moments on the field with my team. But daaang, when I was in the thick of it, it sometimes felt like my whole world was riding on whatever I did next, with only seconds to respond. Talk about feeling pressure. I coped by sheer force of will or by leaning into what I now call “borrowed belief.”
When I didn’t believe in myself, my coaches did. My teammates, parents, teachers, friends. They all did. I was shaped by those “borrowed belief” moments more than I realized at the time. Talk about stellar skill development for coping with pressure and uncertainty. That’s a worthwhile skill that I think we all struggle to build, to some extent.
I can’t imagine learning a lesson like that from a textbook or in a classroom. Not because learning doesn’t happen in classrooms but because when something real is on the line, something personally consequential, growth is accelerated. And sport is an incredible provider of those real and personally high-impact moments.
I can see the pattern now. I’ve committed to goals of all sizes, sometimes reinventing and reshaping my dreams entirely, without ever really knowing how things would unfold. And I go for it
anyway. The belief in myself isn’t always there, and that’s to be expected. After all, going for something that matters, something new and meaningful, usually means navigating uncharted territory with no guarantees.
But I’ve got uncertainty-powered coping skills, which also include surrounding myself with people I can count on: people who inspire me and help me navigate this game of life, and whose belief I can borrow when needed. I have the usual suspects: my wonderful husband and family, friends, and colleagues. I also have an extended team, too. A yoga teacher, a mentor or two, a therapist, Pilates instructors, a physical therapist, my favorite professional athletes and authors.
Thank you, soccer (and sports in general), for providing a joy-filled, high-impact classroom where I could learn that doubt is part of life, but so is believing in something great. I will forever be grateful for the beautiful game and its rich classroom for life, and I look forward to being someone else’s borrowed belief whenever it’s needed.
LFG!
About the Author
Tracy Walton is a strategist and women’s soccer fanatic who partners with individuals
and organizations to create clarity, build certainty, and ignite conviction to create more of what matters most. Tracy lives in Encinitas, CA with her husband Adam Walton (son of NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton) and two children where they spend a lot of time watching and playing all kinds of sports.
The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of any organization with which she’s affiliated.
The views expressed in Your Voice are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Her Sports San Diego.
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