Sink or Swim: A Swimmer’s Fifteen Year Journey to Success
“Take your marks, GO!” Without thinking, your body plunges into the water like a dog. The water crashes onto your skin and consumes you, but you can’t move. Come on. You’ve practiced in this pool for fifteen years, why is it so cold? Why is it that the pool that molded you, nurtured you, made you into the person you are today suddenly rejects you at your last competition? Your body takes over and before you know it, the race is done. 1:02.31. One and a half seconds off your goal. And you ask yourself, “15 years just for this?”
Surprisingly, the brunt of an athlete’s struggle is mental and not physical. Looking back on my swimming career, I relied too heavily on talent rather than effort. This concept is analyzed thoroughly by Dr. Carol Dweck in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. My ability helped me make it to the top, but I let it define me. If I were to post a bad time, I was a failure. It wasn’t until my high school career that I realized how my mindset constricted me to a toxic self-image. And it was in changing my mindset that I was allowed to switch perspectives and reform my entire outlook on success.
According to Dweck, one’s mindset has a profound impact on his or her life. She does so comparing the results of two different mindsets: the growth mindset, and the fixed mindset. The fixed mindset describes how one’s qualities are “carved in stone,” and his or her success is directly correlated to talent. The growth mindset, on the other hand is, “based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others.” (Dweck, 7). I agree with Dweck’s argument. I too believe that the growth mindset is much more favorable than the fixed mindset. Through repetition, failure, and constant learning, an individual is able to achieve far more than what their talent projects, “it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.” (Dweck 7).
But what does achievement mean to these individuals? According to Dweck, success can lie in two different places, the goals that one sets for themselves, or the process taken to achieve said goal “This point is also crucial. In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail — or if you’re not the best — it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome. They’re tackling problems, charting new courses, working on the important issues.” (Dweck 48). As an athlete, this was the hardest concept for me to understand. This is because achievement to an athlete is quantitative and physical. It is easy for an athlete to fall into the clutches of the fixed mindset when your shortcomings are right in front of you and unchangeable in the form of times. Conversely, Dweck’s argument sees failure as an opportunity for growth rather than a setback. I agree with Dweck in that a growth mindset, one focused on long-term improvement rather than immediate success, is considerably healthier than a fixed mindset because I witnessed it for a majority of my swimming career.
I began my competitive swimming career at the age of 7. I was never the fastest athlete, but never the slowest. When my mother signed me up for private lessons with my coach, my ability began to drastically improve. We wrote and analyzed my goal times, worked on my stroke, and reviewed film for each weekly lesson and before I knew it, I was one of the team’s top swimmers. Looking back, this is the point in my career when I adopted the growth mindset. Even though I did it subconsciously, I practiced all the hallmarks of Dweck’s growth mindset. Instead of looking at my times with disgust, I studied all the techniques and exercises necessary for me to improve my times. I looked at failure as an opportunity rather than a setback. And I built upon these shortcomings at every opportunity.
This would all change 6 years later. At the age of 13, I stopped participating in private lessons because I told my mom that I did not need them. I gradually saw myself falling behind. Teammates who were once slower than me began to catch and surpass me. I saw my shortcomings as failures, convincing myself that my talent had run out, and I could never make it back to where I was. Worst of all, I never blamed my shortcomings on myself just as Dweck describes with John McEnroe, a renowned tennis player with a fixed mindset, “It was never his fault. One time he lost a match because he had a fever. One time he had a backache. One time he fell victim to expectations, another to the tabloids.” (Dweck 36).
For the next five years of my swimming career, the fixed mindset controlled me. Just as Dweck’s survey with fixed mindset students illustrates, “Our analyses showed that this was because they ruminated over their problems and setbacks, essentially tormenting themselves with the idea that the setbacks meant they were incompetent or unworthy… Again, failures labeled them and left them no route to success.” (Dweck 38). Along the same lines, I let my failures as an athlete label me. I was unable to achieve success because I never believed that I could. I believed that my results were out of my control and I essentially gave up.
My final year as a competitive swimmer marked my gradual change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Daily practice and changes in lifestyle allowed me to come closer and closer to a time I dreamt of my entire high school career: my very first CCS cut, a 1:01.99. As the championship meet got closer, I felt confident that I could nail the time. I achieved a 1:03.51 six months before CCS, so I was in very good shape to make the cut. I decided to train my heart out for the remaining six months of my career when disaster struck. I became terribly sick and was unable to compete at the top level for the championship meet. I dove in and clocked a time of 1:02.31, four tenths of a second off of my goal.
I was devastated. All my effort, all my hard work, all my struggle culminated in failure. My parents attempted to support me, but it was to no avail. I could not possibly be content with a 1:02.31. It was not until reading Dweck that I realized the fault in my thinking. Dweck describes a similar situation in the story of Jackie Joyner-Kersee’s last Olympics, “A serious hamstring injury forced her to drop out of the heptathlon. She was devastated. She was no longer a contender in her signature event, but would she be a contender in the long jump a few days later? Her first five jumps said no… But the sixth jump won her a bronze medal, more precious than her gold ones.” (Dweck 95). I finally understand what my parents were getting at. They encouraged me to find success in the means I took to approach my goal rather than find failure in the outcome. I had forgotten about how much my life has changed since I set my sights on that CCS cut. I had forgotten about the new drills I learned, the new exercises I picked up, and even how the rigorous training forced me to change my lifestyle habits.
My transition from the fixed mindset to a growth mindset changed my life for the better. It allowed me to see success in what seems like failure. It taught me to value effort rather than ability. Because of this, I wholeheartedly agree with Dweck in that our mindsets can and must be changed. I have experienced its transformative effects for years. Regardless of your background or situation, it will never be impossible to change your mindset. And with all the possible benefits, why wouldn’t you?
