Sukoon

I had a major realization after this tournament I played!

Here’s some context about tournaments: They get VERY competitive, everyone gives their best (including our boys who otherwise play very gently with us) and there’s more rush to win (I speak here for everyone haha :p)

I had a pretty strong team and after having a difficult day of sorts, I SOOOO wanted to win this one!

I had my hopes in our team and was ready to give more than my 100%.

All in all, we lost the tournament, sadly, but I learnt something huge about myself.. Wait for it!

After this 1 particular match our team lost, almost everyone in our group came to me complimenting me about my defense. If you’ve been reading my blog, you already know I am a ‘self destructive defender’ :p, meaning that I use my body to guard the goals and go in too rough and carelessly partly (Time for some truth :p)

On any other day I would have been on cloud nine with even my opponents praising me, but today, I didn’t feel an inch of it. When I told my team mate about it, she said, “You know why is that? It’s called being a woman”.

I was kinda happy to hear that, and knew that it’s because we lost the match that I didn’t feel anything about playing well or getting compliments.

Cut to later that night, when I was talking to one of my team mates about the match, I confided in him and told him that when people compliment me for stopping goals using my body and admire that I take such hard hits, I genuinely don’t feel any pain or impact when I defend. “Why is that? “ I asked.

He shared that if he were at my place and defended that goal with his chest, he would have laid on the ground because of the impact. The reason, he feels I don’t feel anything at that time is because I am so FEARLESS. And because there’s no fear to get hurt, I don’t feel any pain.

That made me happy no doubt, because it made better sense to me, and I explored one of my strengths right there.

What got me here is that I am a person who is otherwise consumed by fear. I am usually jumpy and even have night terrors as a result of this fear and anxiety I experience. But on the field, there’s a different part of me that comes up- the one that’s completely Fearless!

It’s actually my fearlessness and roughness that makes me a good defender, and I have what it takes to overcome this fear off the pitch too. How these 2 parts co exist, that are exactly opposite to each other, and in extremities boggles me!

Now, it’s all about how I leverage my fearlessness to counter the crippling fear inside of me. It’s about using the very same strength to overcome the very same weakness. Wow!