Believing in yourself takes time. Was their a defining moment in your life that helped you start to believe?

Question

Believing in yourself takes time.  Was their a defining moment in your life that helped you start to believe?

Donald Soranno · Answer

Believe in yourself takes time. Was there a defining moment in your life that helped you start to believe? Yes. You know, I actually had several but one of the ones that I can think of, growing up as a kid in downtown Detroit, really didn't learn how to swim. There were pools that neighbors had but they were three foot deep, ten foot round kind of thing. You basically just splashed around in it. So really didn't learn how to swim. I was doing duathlons and my wife, she was doing lots of tries and friends doing tries. So I wanted to jump in the deep end on that. So I actually went to a swim clinic and I had actually already signed up for an Ironman race without even knowing how to swim. Went to the swim clinic, coach went around and asked why everybody wanted to, you know, as an adult learner. I told him that, you know, I never learned how to swim as a kid. I'm in my late 30s, early 40s and I had signed up for a half Ironman and a full Ironman and his response was, yeah, good luck with that. That just totally pissed me off that he would have that condescending attitude. I did a swim class and I set out to prove him wrong and, you know, that was a defining moment for me. That I went through that swim class and I completed numerous triathlons, numerous half Ironmans, numerous full Ironmans, but when I was going through all the training, that mantra was in my head. Just him saying, yeah, good luck with that. And I used that to keep me going and that was a moment that, you know, I just always look back on and don't let anybody tell you you can't do anything. You set your goals. You determine what you can do. But for me, that was a very, very defining moment.

Petr Vabrousek · Answer

When and how I started to believe in myself, that was a long process, there was not a defining moment. I was very unfit and I would say even unhealthy and not really moving kid until I was 10 years old. And then I discovered the sport through my parents and through rowing club in our town. And only then when I was 11-12 I slowly discovered that sport is something really nice and enhancing my life. Although I was really untalented in anything I've ever tried, being it rowing, running, lifting, swimming, cycling, everything I tried I was one of the worst in the whole team. Definitely a lot worse than my younger brother who was very talented on everything, which is very strange. But I really started to believe later on when I discovered that things I wasn't talented for are still manageable if you really go after it, if you prepare properly and systematically, you can even beat talent in some cases, as it happened in my life. So starting to believe in myself was a long process fueled by overcoming my lack of talent with hard work.

Dave Robertson · Answer

So you're looking at a sticky note that I have pasted at my desk. It's traveled around North America with me for the last few years. It's tattered. It has ink stains on it. I wrote it down one day when I had an especially good day or good moment. I can't even remember what the moment is now. But it's there to remind me. And it has to be there, at least for me, to remind me because I don't magically have that I believe in myself button installed in me. I don't think most people do. I don't think that you have some magical defining moment that has you saying, okay, you know what, starting now I just flat out believe in myself. High-end athletes, high achievers, people in the first response community, really anybody that walks this earth has moments of doubt, at least if they are somewhat emotionally aware. We in the first response community suffer from PTSD, or now it's called PTSD, stress injury. We also have an inordinate amount of suffering from imposter syndrome, that feeling that we don't have worth, that we're kind of faking it, that we're going to get found out. And it's because of that that believing in yourself can be a daily thing. It's got to be part of your whole journey. You don't have to wake up every morning and say, okay, today's going to be good. I believe that what I'm doing is a good thing.

Keturah Orji · Answer

Believing in yourself takes time. Was there a defining moment in your life that helped you start to believe? Yes, so the first time I went overseas for a Team USA competition was my junior year, the summer of my junior year of high school, and I had qualified to compete for Team USA in the long jump and triple jump at something called World Youth Championships. And while I was there, I had two huge PRs, more like lifetime bests while I was there, and I finished with a bronze medal and silver medal. And it really showed me that I could compete against, I could rise to the level of my competition and compete against the best athletes in the world. Before that, I'd only compete against people in America, and I had been the best, but I feel like to prove to myself that, not only are you good enough to compete against the people in the world, but you can rise to the occasion when you get to those meets that are at a high level, really showed me that the sport was for me and I had a future in it. So I would say my junior year of high school was when I really started to believe in my track and field self.

Phil Dwyer · Answer

Believing in yourself takes time. Was there a defining moment in my life that helped me start to believe absolutely. When I found out that my family didn't believe in me, that I was going to go be a pair of men. When I found out my friends were talking about me behind my back and they weren't supporting me. It was at that time, I was probably about two weeks out that I decided I would pack up my blues or my class A s and I would put those in the back of my storage unit and not bring them down to the schoolhouse. Because in order to quit that program, you have to dress up in those and present yourself in front of the commandant to quit. And that gave me a desire. It gave me a burning desire to prove them wrong because they had no faith in me. When I had all the faith in myself, that faith turned into that belief. And that belief turned into a maroon beret.

Emma Pallant-Browne · Answer

So for me, it's going to sound really silly because I came from a running background, went into triathlon and yeah, as a runner I kind of knew everyone, I backed myself, I had the results, went into triathlon as a total unknown and really struggled to begin with because my strength wasn't the swim and I was in ITU racing and yeah, was used to being at the front of the field and running and now was like coming in from the back. And I think, yeah again it sounds silly because the swim was my weakness but actually when I won the world triathlon, made a bit of earnings, kind of kept my sponsors happy, that was the time where I actually believed okay, I can make a living from this sport, like I've only just taken up the bike and I'm not too terrible at this so if I keep working my swimming, yeah I can be confident that I'm not just going to throw all my money at a sport that goes down the drain and be owing my mum a load of money.

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"Believing in yourself takes time. Was their a defining moment in your life that helped you start to believe?"