"Surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and the thinkers, but most of all, surround yourself with those who see the greatness within you, even when you don't see it yourself."
- Edmund Lee
Improvement is the motivation for success. Learning something new and making a weakness a strength are fun challenges.
Learning to embrace improvement:
1. Create Your Support System
Find teammates, family members, and friends who can best support you. They are the people you lean on and are the ones that help to hold you accountable. Encouragement and support from others can influence your performance and help you stay focused in high pressure situations.
How to create a strong support system:
a. Let others know how to support you. Those who are closest to you tend to be your biggest fans and want to help you succeed. The problem, they may not know how to support, encourage, and hold you accountable. Take time to share your goals, your process, and how they can best support you.
b. Coaches and Trainers. Hire coaches or ask coaches to help you with specific needs. For example, a baseball player could work with a strength and conditioning coach to work on physical improvements, a batting coach to work on his swing, an assistant coach to work on situations like best scenarios to steal a base or to hit a sacrifice fly, and a mental skills coach to work on focus and dealing with competitive pressure.
c. Find a training buddy. Find that person or people who share a goal that you have or who you think can help you to accomplish your goals. These people should be a source of encouragement, insight, and support. It should be an equal relationship where you are sharing in the process, not a one way street where one person is dictating the relationship.
d. Talk the talk and walk the walk. If you want others to support you to improve, you have to be passionate and excited about what you are doing. Start each day by reminding yourself of why you love what you do and what you are striving for.
e. Support others. Encouraging others makes it fun! Helping to bring out the best in others can keep you motivated and inspired as well. When a teammate is able to train hard, overcome a challenge, and perform at their best, it can inspire you to do the same.