Success and Failure

Success is not measured by the result. But rather the steps that were taken to get to where you are. When you win the lottery, you are not succesful you are just rich and lucky, however, when you build a multimillion-dollar company from scratch, you are successful and rich, which is a great perk as well. I feel we get trapped in this idea of success being the end result of a struggle and that nothing of the in between matters. The little in between, daily things seem so tiny that they are irrelevant when in reality without the little day-to-day things, you would be left with nothing and no end result. This hit my brain because of tennis, when I play, I find myself getting stuck in the end result. "Don't let it be 0 - 6, 0 - 6" or try to make it "6 - 0, 6 - 0" when in reality all I need to do is to play the game. I tell myself on the court when I feel myself floating away, "ball" and I stare at the ball. I also had a note card in my bag where I wrote, "focus for 6 seconds" because 6 seconds is one point and if I do that 4 times its a game and if I do it for 6 games I get the set and if I repeat it for 2 sets I win the match. But all of the success I find on the court will not happen without focusing on the ball for 6 seconds. But this also applies to life! If you wake up and don't do any work on a company or yourself in order to grow. It takes 5 minutes to write an email you can send to 100 people. It takes 5 minutes to do breathing exercises to calm your mind or 30 minutes for an effective workout. These are all things that like in tennis become your 6 seconds to success. The little things that count every day and take you up one step at a time in your life. It is also so important to not let one failure create a train of failures and you fall into a rythmn with. One mistake will not ruin a career, a match or your life. It is important to search for the successes even through a long moment of what seem like failures but really are steps to success. Always look at the glass half full not half empty or you will miss the good in life as it flies by you waiting to be caught.

Some match updates aren't the best. We have hit a bit of a tough patch so the past couple of matches have been losses. With a combination of weather, a flu streak for most of the team including myself and some energy lapses, we have started the upward climb from the bottom. I can never repeat enough how difficult it is to put 16 college students in a team with different experiences, languages, cultures and upbringings and expect it to go without any bumps. However, with our new head coach to guide us we are finding our rythmn once again. School has also had its ups and downs but nothing major as we approach midterms. The year is already flying, I feel time is going faster and faster as life moves on and all I want to do is freeze it or put it in slow motion. So as I always seem to say I am trying to live in the present, cherish the moments with my friends here at school because they are juniors and we are slowly getting to the point where we will go our separate ways, and in our case that involves many miles of difference. I've also come to really feel and realize that my time as a student athlete is getting shorter and shorter and that is something that makes my heart so heavy. Tennis has always had a spot in my heart that was so special, and after losing my mom, it became even more special. Though I won't lose tennis when I graduate, I will lose that competitive side that college brings, which I am so scared to experience. Now we are starting our conference matches this weekend against Alabama State, which I am excited about because it means the season is starting for real now! We get to start back at 0 - 0 for the conference, which will be a good reset for the whole team and a chance to turn some heads.

Thank you all for reading!