Middle School Dodgeball
Below is an excerpt from my book, The Power of Pivot: A Female Perspective on Embracing Change, (Now available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DRXLVB4)
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How much of a difference can belief really make?
“If, I believe I can fly,” as the 1996 song by R. Kelly goes, I won’t actually fly. . .
There’s no debate there. Belief in yourself can only go so far in actualizing some kind of change. There is an upper limit.
Delaney’s story gives us a compelling view on the changes we can actualize from practicing this principle for ourselves. But maybe you aren’t compelled to go to your local government to demand some kind of policy change that will impact the community for years to come. Nonetheless, the components of what underlies her actions can still be relevant to all of us.
Depending on your personal background and current environment, among countless other factors, belief most likely looks very different for you. Yet for everyone, it begins with yourself. Belief begins when the idea of achieving something is first conceived in your mind and then executed in the form of tangible actions. We’ve seen this with how Delaney herself had executed her own self-belief in the form of demanding change within her community.
Belief isn’t the age-old cliché, “seeing is believing,” but instead, “achieving is believing.” And, in order to persist in the direction of achieving anything, the most rudimentary baseline requirement is to first and foremost, as professional Tennis player Venus Williams puts it, “Believe in yourself, when no one else does, (and) that makes you a winner right there.”
Maybe it still sounds too abstract or theoretical. I think there’s no better way to sum up the essence of belief than from this quote by Teddy Roosevelt:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
In middle school, I absolutely loved playing dodgeball during gym class, and because of my competitive nature, I would take it rather seriously. While other girls clung to the back of the walls of the gymnasium, when the gym teacher blew his whistle, I raced forward at full force to the dodgeballs in the center of the gym.
I retrieved those dodgeballs as fast as I could and would then back away, scoping out the current situation. Sometimes, during these first moments, as I attempted to dodge those first few balls thrown my way, someone would very easily hit me as I made a futile attempt at running away. Other times, I would perhaps hit a classmate or two successfully before succumbing to my own demise.
One time though, I recall being the last one standing on my team. Both fear and excitement arose within me as my fight or flight response was enabled. I found myself flooded with newfound motivation from my team cheering me on from the sideline. I can do this. The other team still had a few others in the game, and as I fiercely battled with all of my ability, fruitlessly throwing dodgeballs and dodging the ones flying toward my tiring body, for as much effort as I could produce, it was not enough. I lost.
Teddy Roosevelt also said, “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried”
I was fearlessly in the arena. I refused to be, “those cold and timid souls” clinging to the walls in fear of being hit. Although at the time I was playing against some fierce competition with considerably more athletic talent than myself, and knew fully well that I probably wouldn’t be the last participant standing, I still opted into the arena. The arena isn’t always a pretty place to be or even the most comfortable for that matter, but there’s something enticing about it. The arena brings out your best.
When it comes to your own arena, the first step is the choice to opt in. Belief in oneself is undoubtedly the crux to stepping into the complexities and risks associated with the arena.
Applied to my personal gym class experience, I utilized my ability (although not of extreme talent), and then applied that within a culture (middle school gym class) that brought out my greatest efforts. What’s important here is that we can apply these two components of self-belief to our own lives to help us make conscious pivots or help us to better navigate the environmental changes we may have little control over.
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In this article series, I share excerpts, stories, and musings from my book, The Power of Pivot. I hope you enjoyed this post — if you enjoyed it and want to connect you can reach me via email [thepowerofpivot@gmail.com], or through my website: http://www.thepowerofpivot.co/#/
