Can I? Will I?” And Your Three Choices
Posted in Mentor Messages
The path to achieving your goals will challenge you many, many times. These challenging moments are what stress you, and they are also what makes what you are doing so very, very exciting. I’ve come to believe that stress is the spice of life; don’t wish it away! Stress occurs for goals that you care about; completion of a task, the quality of your result or external feedback (technical), responses from others (emotional), etc. If you care, there is stress. If you don’t, there isn’t. I have no doubt that you care about your Olympic goals – a lot!
Challenges occur all the time, not just in competition. Some are routine like, “Will I be on time for practice?”, and some are intense, like “Will I give 100% of what I’ve got today?” or “Can I dig-down right now or will I ‘mail it in’?” Not all of your challenges will be physical, some will come when someone asks something like – Can you help? Can you change? Can you try?
I call these challenging moments “Can I? Will I?” moments. They can force us to question our accountability, our commitment, and even our goals. Our reaction to each challenging moment is to ask ourselves,: “Can I do this?” And then, more importantly: “Will I do this?”
Sometimes our – ‘yes!’ answers come so easily that the moment flies by almost unnoticed… but not always.
I believe that each time we ask ourselves ‘Can I? Will I?’, we have three choices:
1) Quit. Give up on your goal completely or re-write it. Wanting to win becomes wanting to medal. Wanting to medal becomes wanting to do well. Wanting to do well becomes being happy with a Trip-and-Tracksuit.
When you quit, you become cracked. For sure we all have a few cracks in us, but we don’t like the way it felt and know to avoid quitting again in the future. Quit too many times and you will be broken. You will know you are broken and those around you will know you are broken.
Quitting is always an option in ‘Can I? Will I?’ moments but you rarely (if ever) choose it anymore.
2) Fly under the radar. Do no more but do no less. Waiting for the finish to come to you… you take your hands “off the wheel” and give up control of that moment and your progress. At the end of these days, we can’t help but wonder: “What if, in that moment, I tried something more?” Going under the radar is always a choice but would clearly be a terrible takeaway from an Olympic ‘Can I? Will I?’ moment.
3) Attack. When challenge confronts you with a ‘Can I? Will I?’ moment you can push into it, and attack towards your finish line. Have faith in your preparation, have confidence in your “done-list” and believe in ‘Yes I can. Yes, I will’. Even if it’s an uncertain yes – it’s a yes! There is always a little bit more that you can do, try, learn… GO FOR IT!
Let’s Go Canada!! C-A 
