give yourself a try
“You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.” –Michael Jordan
I’ve recently hired a running coach.
Now, the concept of a running coach is funny to most people. Common questions include:
“What does a running coach do?”
“Does he run for you?”
“Does he pull you along on a leash?”
Most of these are more rhetorical than serious. In reality, if you really would like to know, I wake up at 4 AM every Tuesday and Thursday, roll out of bed, wash my face, roll on some sunscreen, lace up the running shoes I abuse every week, and hop on a bike to do whatever run my coach tells me to do for the next 2 hours.
But the reason I come back every week is that there’s one thing that my coach does for me that has done wonders for my performance far beyond what any running shoe, gel, or watch could do:
He believes in me.
I am naturally pessimistic about myself.
This applies to all aspects of my life — maybe I don’t assume the worst of myself, but I almost always underestimate myself. I have a healthy amount of skepticism for all things, and an unhealthy amount of skepticism for myself.
I believe that by default, I will run slow, lift light, write mediocre pieces, get rejected by most people, and lose in almost everything I try. I’ve learned to cope with this belief. You’ll find numerous writings on this page about coping with failure and accepting the fact that you’ll be terrible at things — those writings are much more for me than they are for anyone else.
But what if I didn’t have to accept the fact that I’m not good at things? What if I’m not going to fail? What if, maybe, I’m better than I think?
My running coach will tell me to run as fast as I can, at the highest my heart can go, for as long as I can.
He’ll say that I can run 10 kilometers further than my record, and faster than I say I can.
Every time I say that I’ll run a distance in X amount of time, he’ll tell me I can do it 10 minutes faster than that.
And every single time he says I can do something, even when I don’t believe I can, I somehow find the ability to do it.
Time after time, I’ve disproved all the beliefs I have in myself — all the limits I thought I had, all the thoughts about failure, all the assurances I had prepared for myself when I failed to achieve my goals.
I understand now why people hire coaches — for running, for writing, for life in general. It’s nice to have someone believe in you, especially if you don’t really believe in yourself. It feels easier to do more if you’re scared of disappointing someone else (maybe because you’re so used to disappointing yourself). It’s nice to find out that, unlike what your mind is telling you, unlike what you’re so used to happening so many times before this, you don’t have to fail.
Maybe this isn’t a problem for everyone. I’m sure that some people have internal monologues that are kind. But for the rest of us, sometimes we need someone else to believe in us before we can give ourselves a chance.
We need permission to try.
To try to do more than usual, to try to reach our limits, to try to exceed what we believe we can do.
I still think that there should be a good balance between believing in yourself and accepting that you may fail. But I’m trying to permit myself to try more, to go all out on something, and to believe that I have a good chance at succeeding.
I’m trying to also push others to give themselves a try. I believe in my friends much more than I believe in myself, and I hope that throughout my life I’ll help some of them try to do something they didn’t believe they could do. I want to give my friends and the people I meet a safe space for them to try new things — I want them to use me to bounce off new ideas, tell me about this new hobby that they want to try, or share about a new habit they’re trying to implement, without judgment or expectation for them to succeed/fail.
I want to believe in my friends so they can believe in themselves. I want to believe in others so that I can learn to believe in myself. I want to believe in myself so that I can try to have hope.
Hope that maybe we’re not too old yet. Maybe we can still become new people. Maybe we’ll still have a chance to learn new things. Maybe we can still achieve the dreams we always talked about. Maybe, after all the failure and disappointment, we can still try, again and again. Maybe this time we’ll make it. Maybe we’re all going to make it.
I‘m going to give myself a try — and I hope you give yourself a try too.
