Bonne Année! Happy New Year to you! 2009! Over the next 13 months, from time to time I will be sending out some simple thoughts that I’d like to share with you and I’d love to hear back from you.
I like to watch/read interviews of people from random ‘careers’ to see how they deal with performance, pressure, success, team dynamics… all the answers to the big questions are out there! Sometimes they are disguised in a medium we might dismiss as being different than our own, but once you start seeing the framework of success, you see it everywhere.
It’s easy to get so into the work of sport; the singular focus on technique, the demands on improving physiology, the pressure of competition that you forget the play and the passion that got you where you are. In the skateboard documentary ‘Dogtown and Z-Boys’, narrated by Sean Penn, they show how a group of California kids “destroyed the status quo and challenged the idea of what was possible” .
If you’re interested, I’d suggest watching it. Are these guys (and girl) so different from you and your quest? Work ethic, passion, drive to be the best… it resonates from their lives then and their interviews now. It strikes me that the person(people) on the cutting edge of a sport always seems to look like they have a secret, a glow… perhaps it comes from the fact that somewhere in them, they are the ones that can remember that they really love what they are doing.
The movie can be rented or downloaded (available at itunes).
I look forward to your comments. Please feel free to share this note with others as my list of athletes is not complete.
Good training, great competitions, Happy New Year
Marnie