The 5 Stages of Success

One of the positives about Social Media is that we can see what people like us are doing around the world.  We can see the skills and talents of athletes our age everywhere, so we can compare ourselves to the best, we can measure ourselves against others, and we can see what we do well and see where we can improve.

There are cool things being done and shared everywhere on Social Media.  Use that as inspiration to go work on your game.

The downfall of Social Media is that we don't see the grind behind each post.  We only see the one, perfect, finished post, but we don't see the many mistakes before and after that post was shared.

We have to make sure that we understand that a lot of work goes into being great at something.  A lot of work goes into that one post, or that one skill, or that one perfect shot.  It really is a process of messing up over and over again, learning from your mistakes, grit, resilience, and perseverance.

One of the most important things to learn is to not get too frustrated when you can't do what you see others do.  You don't know how many times that person messed up before they were able to post that video.  They went through the same struggle that you did.  They just didn't quit until they got it down.

Doing a trick or new skill that your coach taught you or that you saw on IG is like playing a video game.  There are levels that you have to move through before you can beat the game, and some games take longer than others to beat, just like some moves and skills take longer to master.

Just keep working on it.  Try to breakdown the move or skill into individual parts or micro-skills.  Master each micro-skill separately and build from there.  Feel the excitement when you master one micro-skill and use that as momentum to move on to the next micro-skill.

Celebrate when you do a skill right for the first time, then work until you can do it consistently.  Celebrate when you can do a skill consistently then work until you have mastered it.  You know you have mastered it when you can do it almost every time, on command, without messing up.  

When you move on to the next skill or move, don't forget this process.  When you get frustrated, look back at some of the skills that you have learned and mastered before.  Think about other skills that you have mastered that used to be hard for you.  Use your past success for future motivation!