3/9/2011
By Mike gustafson@usaswimming
It's hard to do anything – anything -- when it stops being fun.
I remember when swimming stopped being fun. My sophomore year in college.
Swimming became a job. A chore. Swimming became this elephant in my day. I'd
agonize and stress, then mope around the pool deck. I’d anxiously count down
the seconds until swim practice was over. Swimming became this “thing” of
despair for me. It stopped being fun. I stopped smiling. I wanted to quit.
A few months later, a coach told me (I’ll paraphrase), "Don't worry about
being the best. Don't worry about the times. Don't worry about winning or
losing. Just spend five months of your life. Have fun. Be a leader. And
graduate as a captain."
So I re-tuned my attitude. Didn’t happen at first. It was a slow process.
Literally, I said to myself, “Today I am going to have fun. Today I am going
to love the water.” It seems silly. But it worked. Speaking like that to
myself actually changed my attitude. You know what happened?
The water seemed less cold. The workouts less hard. The races less daunting.
Slowly, day by day, swimming morphed from this elephant in my day to this
event, a rock concert, where I couldn’t wait to get back to the pool. The
process took two years, but it happened. And that adage “happy swimmers are
fast swimmers” proved infinitely true: By the end of my senior year, I was
swimming lifetime personal bests – times that two years ago seemed
unachievable. (I went from a 4:11 in the 400IM at Big Tens to 3:54 two years
later.)
Sharing first names is about the full extent of the similarities I share with
Michael Phelps. But I know the feeling, the sights and sounds and body
postures one goes through when he’s not enjoying the sport anymore. I know
how you look at the warm-down pool with dread. I know the way you stop
kicking as hard in that last final 50 meters. I know these feelings. I’ve
been there.
In comedy, they say people will laugh when they hear/see other people laugh.
If you walk past a park, and see tons of people smiling and laughing,
suddenly you smile and laugh, too. Happiness is contagious – the best kind
of diseases.
Michael Phelps accomplished everything. He has given swimming most his life.
But for me, it’d be nice to think that in 20 years, he’ll still be swimming
laps – not because he has to, but because he wants to.
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我是送舊當天跟鄉民進來看熱鬧的，只是往前站了一點......
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