Have Fun....

On my high school rowing team, I had two coaches who knew how to coach.

They trained us brutally.

6 days a week.  Year Round.

 It was long, hard, mentally, physically and emotionally challenging.

We were fit.  We were at the top of our game.  

We never lost.....

Well, almost never.

On race days, our coaches would help us get into our boat, and send us off down the course.  

The last thing they would always say is

HAVE FUN.

I didn't get it.  They knew perfectly well what the next 8 minutes had in store for us....

We had a nasty sprint at the start, and our lungs would be screaming within the first 2 minutes.  By then we'd  only be in the middle of the course, and because our start sucked, we'd usually be down by that point.  We'd push until our legs were on fire, and some how make it to the second half of our race.  This was where it got HARD.  This is where your hands start to sting because your skin peels off, your legs burn with lactic acid, you can barely breath and you wonder whether you actually have the guts not to stop - but you don't stop.  Because stopping would be suicide.  You don't stop because you know the 7 other girls in your boat are in pain too, and you trust that they wouldn't quit on you.  So you row even harder.  And you get to the last 500 meters.  And the coxswain screams that it's do or die.  The thought of losing is incomprehensible, so you bust it out and you move faster and faster, you push harder and harder.  Until the sweet sound of the bell goes off and your body turns to mush and your stomach turns and you gag.  Then you look around and you realize that you won.  

And it doesn't hurt any more.....

This year, I joined a rowing team that doesn't have the coaching I had in high school.  

We've been going to races and losing.  It is not fun.

But yesterday we won!  And I finally realized what my high school coaches meant when they said 

"Have Fun."  

Having fun is winning.

You know that saying, it doesn't matter if you win or lose it's how you play the game?

I don't believe that.

I want to be successful at everything I do.

What about you?