There is no doubt about it, we ALL fall short! But more often than not, our most meaningful successes derive from our most difficult challenges.
I just got finished watching BYU’s Jimmer Fredette score 32 points in a losing effort against the New Mexico Lobos…but I’m not worried about the team’s future. Losing might be what the BYU basketball team needs to become and March Madness threat. With the recent Jimmermania sweeping the nation from ESPN spotlights to celebrity tweets, BYU players and fans have been looking to Mr. Fredette to secure the team’s future and bring the game home. That’s a pretty high expectation for any one collegiate athlete to live up to. Now that BYU has fallen down, they’ll need to pick themselves up and make adjustments to make sure it doesn’t happen again. With a BYU loss, despite a good performance from The Jimmer, the rest of the BYU basketball team has to brush itself off and decide to make a difference.
My father raised me with a mindset of: “If it doesn’t kill you, it’s making you stronger”. Being a competitive person and growing up with a brother who was two years older than me, there were multiple times when I ended up getting thrown to the ground in a game of football or getting smashed while wrestling. But no matter how much I was in pain, my father—instead of coddling me—would ask, “Are you bleeding? Is anything broken?...No, then you’re okay”. Instead of making excuses for me, he challenged me to get better. This made me a better competitor with my brother and an even greater competitor with kids my own age.
Instead of avoiding challenges, think of them as an opportunity to do something amazing. More often than not, you’ll be surprised at how much you CAN DO. To all the “BYUs” out there and kids with older brothers take Mother Theresa advice, "Life is a challenge, meet it."
P.S. this blog post had nothing to do with my last blog post being in October, my computer must have deleted all my posts ;)
