Dealing with Setbacks*

There was this boy I had once known that was an amazing soccer player. The talk of the town, everybody wanted to be friends with him and wanted to be around him. His coaches loved him and his teachers adored him because he was so bright and on track with his academics they never had to worry about him.

During one of the most important games for his school career he got caught between two guys and his leg over extended. He was rushed to the hospital where he found out that he had tore his ACL and that he wouldn’t be able to play for six to nine months. He was devastated, he thought he was letting his whole community and team down. He honestly didn’t know what to do with his life.

For six months all he could do was sit in a wheelchair and see all his friends do great things while he believed he was going nowhere in life. He felt confused, lost, and like the biggest let down he had ever known.

One day he was on his phone just scrolling through Instagram when he came across this video. It was of a man giving a speech about how we as humans need to take our setbacks and make them our futures and our missions. He listened to it over and over and over until he knew every word like the back of his hand.

He started to live with the mindset that this injury was only an obstacle in his race of life and that there was no way he was going to let this get him down and discouraged anymore.

Us as athletes need to take this story and make it our reality. When a road block is thrown down when you are at your peek. Take it and live with it. Not only because nothing is going to stand in your way of becoming the best you can be but because it is now apart of your story.