The ugly side of sports

Our society operates on the premise that if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything you want. But there’s a fundamental flaw in this belief: not everything is within your control. And choosing to believe the former can royally fuck you up. Because when you don’t achieve whatever it is you’ve invested your whole life into achieving, you’re likely to internalise and conclude that maybe you’re just not good enough. But that might not necessarily be reality. Because there’s a reality that exists beyond your control, beyond your work ethic, and beyond your attitude. And it’s called timing. And it’s called opportunity. And it operates on the fact that life just fucking sucks sometimes.

I moved back to Australia a year ago to pursue my dream of playing soccer at a professional level. For the past ten years, I’ve been trying to break into the Adelaide United W-league squad, but timing has never been on my side. When I was 16, I missed out on playing for Australia in the World Cup Qualifiers for the Young Matildas because I got glandular fever (mono) a month before we travelled. I wasn’t too disappointed though, because I thought, “Well, at least this happened in Year 11 and not in my final year of school.” I was young. I had plenty of years of playing ahead of me. So I took this obstacle in stride, saw the silver lining, and kept moving. I then wasn’t chosen for Adelaide United because I didn’t play for Australia, yet the two teammates who were my age and went away, did. No big deal though, there’s always next year.

Next year came around and the same coach overlooked me because he wanted six feet tall, quick defenders. I was neither. What he didn’t realise though was what I lacked in speed, I made up for in anticipation. But that was irrelevant – he wanted specific central defenders and I didn’t fit that mould. Fuck this, I thought, I’ll move to America. And so I did. And the year I moved, the coach promoted all of these younger players, many of whom I had previously played with. No worries, I thought, I’m on my own path and wasn’t going to wait around for something that could have been; I’m going to make something happen for myself.

I get to America and I’m a starting freshman. I’m playing well and playing every minute of every game. I receive an award for “defensive player of the week”, score my first goal, and then I tear my acl less than a week later. I was pretty devastated, but I was optimistic. This is good, I thought, this will make me appreciate running, playing, and working hard even more than I did. My sophomore year, I worked my fucking ass off to make up for what I lost in the ten and a half months I was out, only to sit on the bench for half the season because my coach didn’t like the fact I told him I wasn’t ready to play when he wanted me to. My assistant coach and volunteer coach, who I both worked with for individual sessions each week, were in his office after every game advocating for me to be played. But the head coach wouldn’t play me. And then I got a stress fracture in my foot from overtraining, which was misdiagnosed and ended up completely separating causing me to be out for another five months. There would be no United when I went home that Christmas, either.

My junior year comes and goes and I have a really good season individually, despite the year being an absolute shit show of drama (teammates almost dying in a drunken car accident, other teammates getting arrested, our coach getting suspended, my coach trying to get rid of me, the athletic department forbidding me from communicating and working with my mentor etc). Everything was shaping up for a really solid senior year – I have my first girlfriend in three years, my coach finally offers me a captaincy role, and I get selected in a few all-conference pre-season teams. And then I tear my second acl. I was shattered. Livid. Heartbroken. I’ll never play soccer again, I believed. How could I? Clearly this, playing soccer, isn’t meant for me, so maybe I’ll get into coaching. And so I did. But coaching didn’t fulfil me. How could I invest everything into coaching when I wasn’t done playing myself? I was 21 when I decided to never play soccer again; I had so many more playing years ahead of me. So at 23 I made the decision that I would try again. I was driven by my fear of regret; of regretting giving up the sport too early and never having really “made it”. And I was driven by my desire to motivate. How could I ever tell a kid that I coached to come back from two acls if I never did so myself? And so I moved everything back to Australia to try and play for Adelaide United.

Trials began and there were about 30 of us competing for what we thought were 18 contracts. Until we realised there wasn’t. After reading about players being signed in the paper, I learnt that before trials began, 15 out of the 18 contracted positions had been given before trials even started. Yet here we were, 30 of us, competing for three positons. And the positions were for wide players and forwards. Not defenders. So for two months, we all went through physical fucking hell with fitness tests, conditioning, and training, and for what? To be cut the week before the season started. To be used for numbers until the contracted, paid players came in.

But I checked myself. As I alluded in one of my posts last year, “Using a smile to see,” I changed my perspective and saw this as an opportunity to continue training in a professional environment that was going to get me better. Next year, I thought, would be my year. I’d have a year of playing under my belt, I’ll be fit, conditioned, and performing and the coach will have no other decision but to sign me because I’ll be that good.

So everything this year – from the club I chose to play for, to not taking holidays, to working out on average 8-9 times a week was to prepare myself mentally, physically, and emotionally for this one goal of playing for United. I would do my own running after running sessions to train under fatigue to improve my fitness levels, I would stay after weights to do my own prehab exercises to ensure my knees were as strong as they could be, and I would do my own ballwork to make sure I was getting extra touches on the ball. And I did all of this to give me the best chance I could of playing at the level I wanted to play at.

But I didn’t have the season I wanted. I went to a club that was already stacked and that essentially didn’t have a position for me. So I was forced to play a position I knew wasn’t mine, but I was still happy. Because at least I was playing. Until I wasn’t. But I understood when I wasn’t playing – it wasn’t personal. My coach wanted to put the best eleven on the field and I just didn’t fit into that. That’s fine. As long as I make it with United, it’ll all be okay. It will all be worth it. Until it wasn’t.

I’ve always struggled with my confidence with regards to soccer – I’ve never thought I was an exceptional player. And maybe that’s partly because I’ve been overlooked for so many years. But this year, these trials, I know I played fucking well. And others knew it too. I had players frequently asking me if the coach had spoken to me because I was standing out in games and trainings, to which I said, nope, haven’t heard anything. And I didn’t hear anything. Until I was cut.

And so here I am, being faced with some harsh, but necessary lessons. And what I’m learning is that hard work doesn’t mean what we think it means in this world. Neither does having a good attitude. Because you can work your ass off, you can have a really positive, non-reactive, open, and growth-minded mentality, but at the end of the day, none of that means anything. Because if a coach or a boss doesn’t like you, there’s absolutely nothing, nothing, you can do to change that. And that, my friends, is life.

Sure, you can tell me that struggle makes you stronger, or what we go through, we grow through. But at the end of the day, what does that even matter? The reality is, I didn’t get what I wanted. And there’s absolutely nothing I could have done differently to have changed the outcome. Because at the end of the day, the coach has his idea of what he wants, and I never fit into that. I look back at the year and realise I could have learnt that it was never going to be so much sooner than I did – his lack of communication with me throughout the year and throughout trials was a clear indication of his lack of interest in me as a player. And you know what? That fucking hurts. It fucking hurts knowing that no matter what I did, how hard I worked, how much I invested into making this dream a reality, it was just never going to be.

So here I am, dealing with feelings of heartbreak, again. Of disappointment. Of frustration. Of bitterness. And of jealousy. I hear about players getting signed and I want to be happy for them because they’re incredible people, but I can’t. All I feel is this heaviness in my heart; this longingness and wish that that was me. This desire just to be given a fucking opportunity. To have a coach see value in me, as a player and person. But I’ve never had that. And maybe I never will. Is there something wrong with me? Do I have an energy about me that repulses coaches? What more can I do as a player or person to be someone a coach can’t overlook?

I know jealousy is toxic. And I know it’s not healthy. But I genuinely can’t help what I feel. I’m hurt. I’m upset. And all of that pain is seeping into my conversations and tainting my perception. I know that when we’re in pain, it’s because of how we’re perceiving something. But how else am I supposed to view this? I see players being given opportunities when they don’t even care about playing at this level, when they’ve been injured for the majority of the past year, when they haven’t worked hard, when they only care about the money, and it makes me fucking mad. But they have something I don’t and never have had – they have a name. And they’ve been given an opportunity.

People around me, family mainly, keep telling me that maybe this isn’t on my path. Maybe I should just give soccer up. But why would I give up something I love? Why would I give up the only thing that has ever made me feel fulfilled? Don’t you think that it’s fucked up, that there are players who give up something they love because they’ve never been valued? Because it hurts too much to go through the continual disappointment, the continual politics, the continual bullshit? Imagine if we taught kids these harsh realities rather than convincing them that having a good mentality and working hard will actually get you somewhere because from my experiences? It doesn’t. You need things that you can’t control and that is often the missing ingredient in so many “success” stories. But it’s not something that’s ever talked about. Because you can’t glorify it. And it doesn’t feel good. We don’t want to believe that we don’t have control over our future because it’s disheartening. It’s disempowering. But perhaps embracing this reality might actually equip individuals with the skills necessary to process disappointment. To prevent them from internalising “failures” as there being something fundamentally wrong with who they are. Because chances are, there’s nothing wrong with them, but everything wrong with timing.

So where to from here? I honestly don’t know. I have no wisdom to share. All I have is what I feel in this raw, unfiltered state that I’ve written about here. I’m hurting. I’m disappointed. And I’m fucking jealous. I didn’t get what I wanted and it’s making me bitter, resentful, and pessimistic. Is that healthy? No. But it’s real. And I’m sure there are beautiful things that will come of this, but knowing that doesn’t help; it doesn’t take away from the pain I’m currently feeling. The pain I know I need to feel. The pain of wanting something so badly, and not getting it. The pain of giving 100% and it still not being enough. And I know there are lessons I need to learn. But not right now. What I need right now is to be human; to feel and to grieve.

From safety to love

“You can’t help anyone who doesn’t want to be helped.” How often have you heard this phrase throughout your life? And do you really believe it? Or is this merely a phrase used to rid oneself of responsibility, of our duty of care to one another as simple human beings?

When people state that you can’t help anyone who doesn’t want to be helped, what they’re inadvertently stating is that there are people out there who are intentionally choosing to suffer, to be in pain, to be alone. And I really don’t believe that to be true. We as humans are hardwired for survival; no human is brought into this world with an innate desire to die. Nor to fail. What human do you know enjoys the feeling of failure?

I recently had someone enter my life who has challenged everything I’ve been conditioned to believe by society; the aforementioned statement being one of those things in question. She believes that no one can help her because she doesn’t want to be helped. And perhaps on a superficial, unconscious level, that might be true. But her biology suggests otherwise.

I recall watching a TED talk earlier this year about children in school and how we as a society operate under the belief that kids do well when they want to do well. So when a kid fails, it’s because of a lack of will. In reality though, kids do well when they can do well. If a kid is not succeeding then, it’s because there’s something in their way preventing them from doing well. As humans, we want to grow. We want to succeed. And we want to get along with one another. But often when we’re in pain or don’t feel safe and don’t know how to communicate that, our behaviours tend to give the impression that we really don’t give a shit.

After hearing this girl state that she doesn’t want help because nothing can help her, it prompted these proceeding questions: What makes people closed? How can you help people who don’t want to be helped? How do they get to that point of being closed? What can give someone purpose and hope and a reason to keep on living? How can we create more people like Nicole Gibson’s teacher and my professor? What helps save people’s lives and what doesn’t help? What do people need and how can they get it?

And the one answer that kept pulling at my heart? Connection. And connection in the form of unconditional love. But what does unconditional love even mean? And how can we achieve it?

I’ve spent much of my life trying to find places in which I feel love and belongingness and that’s always been my primary focus. But after having read Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek and revisiting Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I realise that my focus has been on something that cannot be felt without something else: safety. In Leaders Eat Last, Sinek focuses on this aspect with specific regards to businesses and companies, but I realise that feeling safe is a necessary component before any single person can feel love and connection. So the question then is not, how can we feel love, but how can we feel safe?

Almost everything in society today is focused on the individual – when you read self-help books, it’s always about how you as the individual can better yourself, and I fucking hate it. Because it’s an endless cycle that preys on the feeling that the majority of us do not feel like we are enough as we are. Don’t get me wrong, investing in yourself and your development is invaluable, but what I’ve found is that it’s not fulfilling. And it misses the whole purpose of what life is really about: connection.

I’ve often believed that with regards to mental health programs, we’re focusing on the wrong thing – we’re focusing on what the individual needs to do to become better, whether that’s learning to identify one’s triggers, learning how to communicate their feelings, or just learning how to manage one’s pain; it’s all tailored towards the individual taking responsibility for themselves. Which, I’ll admit, has its place. But what if, instead of teaching people to work on themselves, we taught them how to be there for other people. What if we instead, taught people how to love? Taught them how to create an environment in which others feel safe to express themselves, to be themselves? Because that, to me, is more transformative than any self-help course I could ever take.

When I asked the question above about what helps save people’s lives and what doesn’t, I looked to what helped save my life three and a half years ago. And the answer? My professor and my really good friend Ida. What did they offer me, other than being there for me, that others didn’t? Complete acceptance and unconditional love. They provided an environment in which I felt safe, in which I could just be without judgement. I put them both through fucking hell; I used to text Ida and tell her no one cares, no one gives a shit about me, why don’t I just die, meanwhile, she was there. She was caring. But I couldn’t see it. I was in too much pain to acknowledge her. And how did she react? She didn’t. She never took it personally. She never judged me for anything that I said or did. She just chose to love me. To support me. To accept me. And that? That’s what saved my life.

So instead of asking, how can we make people feel loved? We need to be asking, how can we make others feel safe? Safety comes from trust. And trust is established in the spaces of non-reaction, non-judgement, and total acceptance. Unconditional love is synonymous with complete acceptance. And I believe these are all things we can work on and develop. Yes, learning how to talk about your feelings is great, but what if the other person judges you? Or reacts to you? What then? What I’ve found is that it’s in those times of judgement and reaction that forces people to retreat, to isolate themselves, and to become closed. I don’t believe anyone truly doesn’t want to be helped; I believe that they’re often in too much pain and have been rejected too many times that they don’t believe help is obtainable. What I’m finding though, is that love changes that. Connection changes that. It’s transformative. And it might just be life-saving.

But don’t you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else? No. Because the truth is, you already do love yourself. It’s just that our perception, based on everything we’re fed from society, has been influenced so much that we’ve been made to believe we’re incomplete, we’re not good enough, and we don’t love ourselves. But if you can understand this perception, it might just revolutionise your life. And for me, this perceptual shift happened a few weeks ago when I was doing some work on altering my perceptions. I was telling the guy I was working with how any time I made a mistake in soccer, I would catastrophize the mistake into believing it meant I wasn’t good enough, in any aspect of my life. He challenged me and said, “So imagine that you have just played the best game of your life, but two weeks later, you play even better - does that mean that in the first game you played, you weren’t good enough?” And the answer was evidently, no, because it was the best at the time. He then proceeded to ask me, “What does it feel like to be good enough?” My initial response was, “Full, happy, content.” Okay, so what do I need to feel those things? And I couldn’t answer that question. He then proceeded to say that “good enough” doesn’t exist; it’s just an imaginary construct. Because everything that you are, in this moment, is who you are. You don’t need to add anything to your life to become “good enough” or to love yourself, because you already do. All of that exists within you. All you need then, is a perception shift. And that’s exactly what I experienced.

Having said all of this, what is my advice? I really don’t believe you need to keep working on yourself in the conventional meaning of that term. Because you are enough. You do love yourself. You have absolutely everything you need within you. Instead, work on creating a space for others in which they can just be. Without judgement. Without reaction. And without ego. When it comes to helping others, don’t. Helping someone cannot be your primary focus because that comes from a place of imbalance, a place of superiority, a place of ego. And how do I know what is best for you? I don’t. And so I won’t help you. But I will love you.

Who do you want to become?

Sometimes it takes meeting someone to help you realise all the places in which you are stuck. At least that’s what happened with me. About five or so weeks ago, I met a girl. This girl helped me realise so much about myself, despite not knowing anything about me. One of her first observations was that I was so “tense” – in my movements, in my rigidity with who I thought I was, and in my interactions. Less than a week later, she added to this by saying that I’m a “head” first person – when I meet someone, it has to make sense, rather than it necessarily feeling right. And the reason for that is because I’m not in my body, I’m in my head. And she was absolutely right.

Her next observation came about with regards to sex – I have all these little rules about how things are supposed to go when you meet someone: first you get to know them, then if you like them, you might kiss, hold hands, and cuddle, and then after some time has passed to consolidate those feelings of trust and comfort, sex will naturally ensue. She challenged this though, why does it have to be that way? I reasoned that for me, someone who isn’t in their body, it just had to make sense. But what I didn’t realise was that these “rules” were my way of rationalising the feelings of shame and guilt I had which were associated with sex. I felt like it was taboo or wrong to do anything with someone before you knew them. Holy shit – I’ve been carrying around this shame and guilt for years, where did it all come from?

I can pinpoint where all of these feelings started. And naturally, they started in my childhood. When I was around 7 or 8, I vividly remember my Oma stating, “If any of you are gay, I’m going to disown you.” Now at that age, you don’t think much of a comment like that, but you do internalise it. Likewise with my parents and brothers at the same time being outwardly against homosexuals – you then grow up with this internal belief that being gay is wrong. When I was about 12, I was looking through Anastacia’s music album and I vividly remember feeling sexually attracted to her – I was so confused. And angry. So much so that I said, “No Nicole, this is wrong. She’s a girl and you’re a girl and you can’t look at her breasts and be attracted to her. That’s wrong.” And so I stopped – not looking, but feeling. I completely shut off those feelings. And perhaps that’s why I’ve struggled to feel much of anything for all of these years.

This helps explain why in college, I was always so uncomfortable with my teammates getting changed in front of me. At the time, I thought it was because I was afraid that if my teammates caught me glancing their way that they would think I was checking them out and I didn’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable. But I think the real reason was that I was afraid I might actually enjoy looking at them. But when I was 12, I made an “agreement” with myself that I would not allow myself to feel those feelings because they’re wrong. I realise now, that I’ve been so sexually repressed because of these subconscious beliefs that I had no idea I was carrying around. And so I owe a lot of thanks to this girl – she helped loosen something within me that I wasn’t even aware was there.

Not only have I struggled with these feelings of guilt and shame, but also those of not feeling like I was enough as I was. I alluded to this in my former post, but it again stems from my childhood and my difficulty to accept my sexuality. My biggest fear growing up was disappointing my parents – I hated the way it felt to disappoint them. And that’s a primary reason why I quit tennis; I couldn’t handle disappointing them. And it’s also the primary reason I struggled for so many years to accept who I was – because I felt like no matter how well I did in soccer, or how well I did in school, there was still a part of me that wasn’t good enough. A part of me that was “wrong”. A part of me that was a disappointment to my parents. And it wasn’t anything they overtly said, if anything it was the covert behaviours that I interpreted as rejection of who I was and internalised as failure.

The problem with self-limiting beliefs such as not feeling like you’re good enough is that it isn’t isolated to one aspect of your life. Instead, it permeates everything. Every interaction, every hobby, every achievement. It affects how you carry yourself, how you see yourself, and ultimately how much you achieve. I’m convinced this is the belief that is the cause of my injuries, the destruction of my relationships, and the reason I’m so hard on myself both in life and in soccer. So now that I’m aware of all of this, what does this mean for me?

About three months ago, I started an anti-inflammatory, alkalising cleanse to ultimately heal my gut from the digestive issues (leaky gut) I was experiencing. This cleanse, which consisted of no grains, no dairy, and no sugar, sounded like torture. But it’s actually been one of the best things for me – I now cook for myself three times a day, and clean up straight away. I live in a much cleaner environment, and I feel so much clearer in my thinking and within my body. I feel strong – not just because of the food I’ve been consuming, but because of what I’m choosing to focus on.

In my former post, I brought up the law of attraction. Within these past few months, these laws and all the potential they possess have become so much more apparent in my life. My excitement towards this subject is palpable and I can only hope that you too, will experience a similar excitement.

After struggling to find a job for almost two months, I went onto LinkedIn and I searched for people who were interested in the same things I was acutely interested in; self-limiting beliefs, law of attraction, technology and human behaviour, and injuries. I then reached out to a few people in hopes of connecting with them. Two days later, I had a trial shift in the city. But it just so happened that the trams in Adelaide stopped working that afternoon. So along comes this guy who’s eating a bag of lettuce, which I thought was peculiar. He too, was stranded in the city. But he didn’t seem to care at all. And so we caught an Uber together and I realised that this was a guy who was living the life I wanted to live – he lived without a phone for three years. And doesn’t use technology all that much now. He took a course on energy and self-limiting beliefs which changed his life. Do you think it’s pure coincidence that we met that day? Because I don’t think it was. I think I manifested him into my life.

I asked him my favourite question that I ask new people – what’s a book that has changed your life? He said that his mentor, Bob Proctor, swears by Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. So naturally, when someone recommends a book that has changed their life, I proceed to purchase said book. While at the bookstore, there was a book that caught my eye, You Are the Placebo, and no matter how much I tried to ignore it, something about the book wanted me to read it. And so I did. And upon commencing the first chapter, I realised this was a book that was going to change my life. And it is.

The purpose of life, I believe, is to become intentional creators of our own life. What we don’t realise is that we create everything in our reality – when we experience something we don’t want, it’s because on some level, that’s the energy we’re putting out into the universe. The universe will always give you what you ask for. But not what you consciously ask for – it’s what your energy is projecting. Many people say they want money, but what they feel isn’t the possession of money, it’s the absence of it. And, because of law of attraction, the energy you put out is the energy you get back. So if you’re experiencing the absence of money, the universe will give you more of that.

When we experience what we don’t want, we inadvertently experience what we do want. What tends to happen though, is that we focus on what we don’t want and so the universe gives us more of that. I know that I intentionally manifested this girl in my life – I kept putting out into the universe that I wanted to feel wanted like a guy wants a girl. And this girl did exactly that. Which I now realise, is not actually what I wanted. And so I’m choosing to focus on the feelings I do want to experience; safety, balance, love, and appreciation. What’s imperative though, is to not just write these words on a piece of paper, but to experience the feeling of them before they happen. Because everything in this world is made up of energy (everything is made up of atoms and all atoms are made up of electrons and all electrons have an electron cloud which is really just energy), we can literally manifest whatever we want in our life so long as we experience it before it happens.

In Dr. Joe Dispenza’s book, he helps explain how people can walk on coals without getting burnt – and it’s because they believe they can. And they don’t question how. They transcend their current state of being to become someone else; someone who can walk on coals. And what’s even more remarkable? You and I are capable of this too. Not just in regards to walking on coals, but to become anything that we want. 97.5% of our DNA is “junk” – in other words, we only activate and use 2.5% of our DNA and that’s because we’re constantly thinking the same thoughts and engaging in the same behaviours, hence we experience the same things. But, by altering our thoughts and our energy, we can ultimately change our DNA - how fucking cool is that?!

All it starts with is belief. The people who heal themselves from cancer through thought alone are those that truly believe, with their energy, that they will get better – if we have the capacity to create illness, we also have the capacity to create wellness. Every potential in the future, exists in this moment right now – that’s called the quantum universe. So whoever you want to become, whatever you want to achieve, you can. The potential for our lives is literally limitless and if we can harness our own energy, we can fulfil our life’s purpose; we can become intentional creators of our own life.

This sounds amazing, right? And it is. What’s so amazing is that this is accessible to every single person on this planet – all they have to do is transcend their current state and experience whatever or whoever they want to be, before it happens. This energy (your thoughts and a heightened emotion) will then slow down in the form of matter to become whatever it is that you are desiring. The challenge is rewriting your script – overcoming the years of programming with thinking the same thoughts and engaging in the same behaviours. But with persistence and clear intentions, anything is possible.

After everything I’ve realised about myself recently, I’ve wondered if we are all, to some degree, carrying around these subconscious feelings of shame and guilt as well as feeling like we aren’t enough. And I suspect we are. I believe then that the purpose of our adulthood is to decondition ourselves from everything we’ve been conditioned to think and feel from our childhood; to return to our innocence. Don Miguel Ruiz talks about this in The Four Agreements – our goal is to eradicate those little “agreements’ we’ve made with ourselves and to return to being young, wild, and free. As always, change starts with awareness. And in light of the recent books I’ve read, I now believe any change is possible so long as you believe it is and commit to experiencing your future before it happens. Surrender to the universe, and you’ll receive what you’re asking for.

So who or what do you want to become? Because for me, I want to be free.