As we settled into our seats and watched the teams coast up and down the court, Jordan was telling me how he was disappointed that one of his favorite players on the team was traded earlier in the week. I started thinking about how professional athletes pick up the pieces, move their families and start over many, many times in their careers. Certainly I could do the same.
I thought about the Tigers. The Lions. The Red Wings. Some players, like Steve Yzerman, spend their entire careers with one team. Others bounce around. Some go from a losing team to a winning team and earn a championship the next season. Others grow with their teams from losing season to losing season, and maybe one day have an opportunity to earn a championship.
How tough that must be, I thought. How do they survive? Regardless of the big dollars professional athletes earn, rejection still hurts. When an organization tells you that you're no longer needed, it hurts. But we're all human, we all make the best of a situation, and we all move on. We can learn a lot from athletes.
Right now, I have some breathing room as I search for my next career opportunity. Athletes immediately are thrown into a game with new teammates and a new coach and are expected to perform to incredible standards right away. That must be hard, yet they succeed! Brandon Inge was traded to Oakland and started playing the best baseball of his life in the pros. It goes to show that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, that success isn't determined by your past but where you're at now.
So today I think about the future, my future teammates, my future organization. I think about how that team might be missing a key link to success today. I think about how I might be that missing link. Our future championship. Will I be an MVP? It's all up to me. On I go!
You write really well Rachel. Maybe its because it's so much coming from your heart
ReplyDeleteThank you, Karen! That means a lot, especially coming from you. I think I've always had a desire to write, and especially to write from the heart. And I'm starting to think I might actually be pretty decent at it too! I remember in middle school I wrote for our middle school paper, and I wrote horoscopes one month and my teach asked me if I stole them from somewhere else because she didn't think I was capable of writing so well. I'll show her! Haha.
ReplyDelete