Skatergirl is frustrated. No matter what she tries, she can’t land a triple salchow to save her life.
This isn’t a new jump for her. It was the first triple she landed, and usually she can do it in her sleep.
Even though she’s supposed to work on her spins, Skatergirl decides to try it one more time. Unfortunately, she falls, so she decides to do it again. And again. And again.
She knows she’s supposed to move on, because it’s part of her mental game plan. She knows she should take a break in order to reset and get back on track. Instead, she is letting the frustration sweep her away. She just wants to land her triple salchow.
In the end, Skatergirl ends up falling on triple salchows until the end of the session. No spin practice today…again. She gets off of the ice frustrated and in tears.
A fork in the road
Let’s draw a big “Y” on the ice. The Y symbolizes a road that travels upwards to a fork in the road. The place where the three roads meet represents a decision to be made. At this fork, Skatergirl has an opportunity to choose one road or the other.
The Left Fork takes you away from your training plan and leads you to Mediocrity. The Right Fork follows your training plan and leads to Success.
If you follow the Right Fork, be prepared to make tons of mistakes. It is guaranteed that you will fail over and over again. You will have to do boring repetitive tasks in practice hundreds if not thousands of times. It is mandatory that you push yourself out of your comfort zone over and over again every day. And, there is no guarantee that you will become a champion.
The Left Fork on the other hand is comfortable, smooth and easy.
So why would anyone in their right mind choose to go down the Right Fork?
At the end of the Left Fork: “Congratulations! You get to be totally, wonderfully and amazingly…mediocre.
At the end of the Right Fork: “Congratulations! ________!” Fill in the blank, it’s up to you.
The road to Champion City leads to you becoming a champion, and this is the road that everyone says they want to take. However, saying you want to do something and actually doing it are two very separate matters.
Today, Skatergirl took the Left Fork. She had a plan in place to help her manage her frustration, but in the moment she decided not to use it. This could have been a conscious choice, or a choice by default (aka not making a choice). Either way, the outcome is the same.
Remember, when you’re in the thick of it, hard to remember that you DO have a choice.
If it was, more people would take the Right Fork and be on the Road to Success.
Are you going to go to the party with your friends, or go to bed on time so you can have a productive training session tomorrow? Are you going to eat junk food, or something healthy? Are you going to work your mental skills training, or throw a tantrum in the middle of practice?
These are all choices you make. It’s easy to go down the Left Fork, it’s harder to choose the Right Fork. A lot of the time, the Right Fork involves sacrifice.
If it is Success you want and not Mediocrity, you have a reason to take the Right Fork.
Your Big Enough Why will help you choose the Right Fork when you are tempted to take the Left Fork.
Conscious vs Unconscious
Once you have your Big Enough Why, the next step is to become conscious about the decisions you make. Whenever you are faced with a choice, you want to ask yourself, will this take me to Success or Mediocrity?
Everyday, we all make thousands of decisions and each one a fork in the road. For many decisions, it doesn’t matter what choice you make, but there are some decisions where your choice is important. That’s why you need to be conscious of the decisions you’re making, so when important ones come along you can choose your own path.
You’re in control. You’re in charge. You get to decide what path you take. If you don’t like the path you’re on, you get to change it.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re on the road to Success or Mediocrity, what matters is that you are going where you want to go, and you have made the choice to be there.
This “Fork in Road” tool puts you in charge of your own destiny. Instead of finding yourself going down the Left Fork by default (aka not making a choice), you will notice the forks in the road, and make a choice where you want to go.
Remember that the Right Fork is not better than the Left Fork. It doesn’t matter which fork you decide to take. Each situation is different, each decision needs to fit your needs at the time.
The worst thing isn’t which fork you take, the worst thing is not seeing Fork in the road, and ending traveling away from your target destination.
Sometimes we want to be on the road to Lala Land. That’s okay, as long as you’re aware of it.