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Garland Cooper
StudentSportsSoftball.com Managing Editor
Playing sports can be frustrating. Some days you have an umpire that squeezes the zone for your pitchers. Sometimes you have to play when it is really cold outside, or hot, or windy, or rainy. You may also experience some moments in your sports career when you completely disagree with your coach or with your parents.
Life is not much different. You will be treated unfairly. You will be disappointed time and time again.
In life and in sports it is important to remember that you cannot control everything. In fact, we can control hardly anything at all. Benjamin Franklin said it best, "While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us."
There are two things in our lives we can control and two things only: Effort and Attitude. If you can control those two things then you will succeed.
1. EFFORT
In order to succeed at anything in life you must work. I have never talked to any businessman who has explained his success saying, "Well, funny story, I just fell into it…it was dumb luck!" Similarly, I have never talked to a successful athlete who has not told stories of endless hours on the field and in the cages. More often you hear of people working incessantly to reach their goals.
Yes, there will be times when your effort will go unnoticed and you will be overlooked. There will be times when you work your hardest and fail. The only thing to do when that happens is to pick yourself up and work even harder.
Have the pride in yourself and honor the game enough to never slack off. If you do, you are cheating yourself and you are being selfish. Never give less that your best.
If you give the best of yourself all the time and give 100% of what you have then you will be successful and you will have no reason to doubt yourself. If you put in the effort in preparation and in competition then you have won half the battle.
2. ATTITUDE
The other half of the battle has to do with attitude. It can be easy to fall into negativity when things aren't going your way. Maybe in your next game the umpire is terrible, your coach sat you on the bench and it is raining. That can make for a bad day, or you can control your attitude and refuse to be brought down by circumstance. There is always another game, another day. If you let negativity in then all the things you can't control will start to control you.
We all know the people in life and on our teams that play "the blame game". For example, "They scored seven runs but the umpire was squeezing my zone and forced me to pitch down the middle, my infielders should have gotten to a lot of those balls, and the ball was also slippery and I couldn't grip it…." You know that player don't you? That is exactly what you want to avoid. Guess what? The team you are playing is often working under the same conditions. Whichever team can cope the best and has the best attitude in the given conditions will win, period. It is very simple.
Another important thing to remember is that attitude can be contagious. If you keep your attitude in the right place you can influence others to do the same. Similarly, if you are constantly surrounded by people who are negative it may be easy to get caught in the trap and let your attitude slide…DON'T! Remember, there are only two things you can control; you are going to want to hold on to them both and only then can you truly succeed.
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