Welcome to another edition of Unshakable, Unbreakable, Unstoppable Stories with Bonnie Jean.
As a kid in middle school and high school, I wasn’t popular. I wasn’t super-smart. I wasn’t a good singer. I didn’t know how to play any kind of musical instrument. I was too timid to try acting in any high school plays. So I really wanted to be great at sports. Especially softball, volleyball and basketball.
I’d been playing softball since I was old enough to hit the ball off a tee. Then when I got to high school, I played volleyball and basketball.
I loved the competition. I loved working hard and learning new skills or improving the skills I already had. I loved being part of a team and being fit.
What I really wanted was to be a super-star. I wanted to be the best spiker on the volleyball court. I wanted to be the top scorer on the basketball court. I wanted to the top home run hitter on the softball field and the best strikeout pitcher on the mound.
Only I didn’t have the talent I needed to be any of those things. In volleyball, I was a setter. I set the ball to my teammates so they could spike it and get all the glory.
In basketball, I had a great offensive night if I scored two points and only got playing time because I could play decent defense.
In softball, I hit one over-the-fence home run in all the years I played. I mostly got base hits and the occasional double. As for pitching, I never threw very hard and had to rely on throwing different pitches to keep the batters off balance. Which meant I never struck out a whole lot of batters.
See, I was an average athlete with an average amount of talent. I was good enough to be good but not good enough to be great.
If I had understood my role on each of the teams I played on and focused on becoming great at my role, I would have had much more success and helped my teams be more successful.
Instead, I destroyed my self-confidence by comparing myself to my teammates. I was never as good as Sue in volleyball, Sarah in basketball and Mary in softball. (Not their real names, but there was at least one girl on every team who was better than me.)
But I wanted to have the talent that they had. I wanted to be as good as they were. I wanted my coaches and the fans to notice me the way they noticed the teammates who were better than me.
Only I was so focused on what talent I didn’t have that I didn’t maximize the talent that I did have.
Don’t make the same mistake I did. Don’t miss out on how great you are by comparing yourself to people with different kinds and levels of talent.
Find out what you’re great at, then challenge yourself to become better and better at that one thing. That’s how you develop and build your unshakable confidence.
To Your Dreams,
Bonnie Jean
P.S. Please don’t wait as long as I did to find your unshakable confidence! Life is really much more fun when you set goals and take action to make them happen. No matter how old you are, you can be an unshakable, unbreakable, unstoppable Dream Doer today! To help, I want to give you three FREE gifts, which includes the entire audio book of The Dream Doers and the Summer of Secrets. To claim your FREE gifts, visit TheDreamDoers.com now.
