FC92: You Are Never Too Small to Achieve Your Dreams Feat. Tyler Johnson

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Remember this your lifetime through – tomorrow, there will be more to do and failure waits for all who stay with some success made yesterday – tomorrow, you must try once more and even harder than before. – Brian Cain

Hi, and welcome back to the star player academy show, episode 92.

This is Marilyn Wo, I help serious athletes like you get your mind back in the game.

If you have been listening to my show religiously enough, you will see an episode being published everyday. And from last week, you must have noticed that I’ve stopped for a week or so because I’m preparing something better and bigger than what you should deserve as an athlete. So I will simply publish as much as I can, hopefully the show will help you.

In today’s show, I would like to say that the transition periods of an athlete are always the hardest. When we are really having fun playing the game we are so good at, it feels good. We are sort of at peace with what we are doing at that time and we do not wish to stop. But when we are working on skill sets or fitness, trying to push our pace or our performance to another level, that is when we have to overcome that comfort zone to something better than what we have done before.

We are always looking for ways to improve ourselves, yet there will always be that resistance in us that love to see us stop and stay in that cosy spot. Getting over this resistance is that transition. At the same time, getting yourself to treat usual practices as something as important as the competition is also another form of transition. You know jolly well that practice is not the same as competition, how do you make yourself or push yourself to do your best during practice? How do you overcome that resistance and transit to a level that will be easier for you at the games?

I truly wish to provide you with more valuable lessons and guides to get you through such transitions, because there are always better ways rather than for you to feel lost and unsure of which way to go.

As I move on with more stories, lessons and quotes to drive your day, if you have any story that you would like to share with everyone, do send me an email at marilyn@starplayeracademy.com. Send me in any format that’s best for you to convey your experience as an athlete that can inspire people around the world. Maybe you are facing a difficult situation right now, you may be recovering from an injury and making everything possible so that you can go back to your sport as soon as you are well, how are you helping yourself to get back on track?

People want to know, many sports people want to know how to cope with pain and yet perform at their best to help their teammates and not let them down. How are you coping? Leave me an email and I will communicate with you to see if you are indeed comfortable to share your story with the listeners out there. It would be great for them to hear as you may be able to help them with their situation, who knows? So I hope to hear from you, just email me once again at marilyn@starplayeracademy.com, if not you can go to my website at starplayeracademy.com and drop me a message in the contact form, I will be so so happy to respond to you anytime. I will be very happy to hear from you. So don’t be shy.

Now, yesterday, we witnessed the power of Josh Cassidy fighting cancer at a young age that left his legs partially paralysed, still he moved on with a passion he was so sure about, seriously pursuing racing with aspirations no one can stop.

The point I’ve been trying to make is exactly what I’ve always stood firm for my past years as an athlete, even for now as I train for my marathon to be held this December.

So much that I’ve been standing firm on, it doesn’t mean I’m already on top of my game or I’ve mastered anything to be the best in the world. It’s a bit tricky or rather there’s an irony being an athlete.

For one, you are training hard to reach the top of the mountain, win a gold medal and feel great about it, on the other hand I’m here to tell you that’s not what competitive sports is about.

I know some of you don’t really understand when a great athlete who has won would come and tell you that it isn’t about the colour of the medal, yet everyone feels sad when they lose that spot.

What it really means and what you must truly understand is that, yes as athletes, we must tailor all our training, plans and strategies towards winning, but we need to strike a balance between the expectations of winning and what we can do.

The expectations will be tied to the challenges that we need to overcome to reach our goals. And this ultimately dictates how well you do at competitions and trainings.

As I’ve shared yesterday, Josh Cassidy won many times and lost many times too and he feels emotional after losing not because of the medal count. The medal count is just what we see and what he has to show, he is not affected by the numbers.  But when it comes to losing and winning, it’s just something that he sees as his possibility in terms of his performance.

He knew he could reach that certain timing because he is willing to take that challenge. But it’s only after the end of the race that he realised he could have done something that could have brought his timing to the next level. He must have reflected upon his race and there might have been certain areas that could have been done better or there may have been times when he just didn’t do as well during the competition as compare to his training. It just happened at that point in time.

Point is, that shouldn’t stop him from moving on to the next race. This is the next challenge for him and he should keep polishing that to reach the next challenge, and it goes on and on from there.

This is what I’ve learned from Garret Kramer’s book called “The Path of No Resistance”: “Knowing that your feelings come from the inside (your thinking), and not the outside (your circumstances), is what allows your state of mind to self-correct when you are troubled.”

Remember to respond to any situation based on what your value is and what you stand for rather than react to what happens out of your control.

Today, we will study the story of Tyler Johnson, who’s journey to be drafted as an NHL Tampa Bay Lightning center did not come easy, and as the smallest player in his team, he was able to make the impossible happen.

Based on the Tampa Bay Tribune, he was passed over by scouts and coaches who told him he couldn’t make it in hockey.

Tyler Johnson told Tampa Bay Tribune: “People would always notice me, notice my play. And I would talk to scouts, I would have dinner with teams and talk to GMs, and if you didn’t know any better you would think that I was on my way to something,” Johnson said. “But there was always something holding it back, and a majority of the time it was my size, and guys just didn’t know if it would translate.”

As a teenager, Johnson was passed along at every step — even after winning playoff MVP honors with Memorial Cup-winning Spokane in juniors and capturing gold with the USA World Junior team. He was passed over in the Bantam draft, cut from camp in the United States Hockey League and bypassed by every NHL team — twice — in the league’s entry draft. Even when he thought he had his first pro contract with Minnesota all but signed in September 2010, the offer was withdrawn after he was injured in a prospect tournament.

In fact, with all these problems clouding him, he got to a point of contemplating whether to even continue playing hockey anymore.

If you don’t know Tyler Johnson, he has a small frame but has been helping his team Tampa Bay Lightning score enough goals to bring his team back to life.

His head coach Jon Cooper mentioned before about Tyler that “the bigger the game, the better he plays.”

I guess what’s important here isn’t so much about the physical training he has been doing. I trust that his teammates also go through the same set of program and gruelling training that he has.

What’s important is that he is able to put his small frame to his advantage to serve his team. At the same time, he is able to be in control of his performance on court.

So how did he do that?

As Brain Cain said in his book “The Mental Game of Basketball”, “You must be in control of yourself before you can control your performance on the court.”

It’s only when you can gain self-control in such fast paced and intense situation that you are on the road to succeed.

If you want to succeed like how Tyler Johnson does it against all odds, you need to figure out your dreams in life, what’s important to you and keep on immersing in that thing that is important to you. It’s only when you keep doing it that you end up getting used to how it feels to be at that event, or that situation, it becomes second nature to you. That’s when no matter your size, talent, weakness or strength, you are able to control yourself and the situation, because you’ve already been living in it.

For Tyler Johnson, this is what he told reporters: “I think every morning I’m just happy to be here and I’m living my dream. So that’s what’s driving me is to try to be the best I can and play for my family. They sacrificed so much for me to be here, and I’m living my dream, so I want to keep living it as long as possible.”

Tyler has a dream and it’s just being a player in NHL, he didn’t force himself to make sure he does what he can do in the playoffs, all he wants to do is to be at his best all the time. That’s what successful athletes do and that’s why they are successful. When they do their best, they do not regret when a mistake’s been made or the results turned out to be worse than before. They know they’ve already done their best and that was what they always live up to, so they can take a few days to sulk on it and get back into the court again to get ready for the next game.

It’s always hard to get back up when you are down, it’s also hard when there are uncontrollable odds against you such as size, but when you live on the value of every game is important, and everything you do you want to do your best, then, you will always have an easier time to get back up.

With that, we have come to the end of today’s episode.

Before you go, I have a quote for you by Brian Cain, he said, “Remember this your lifetime through – tomorrow, there will be more to do and failure waits for all who stay with some success made yesterday – tomorrow, you must try once more and even harder than before.”

Thank you all for joining me today. If you are wondering what you can do to be the best athlete you can ever be, go to starplayeracademy.com, I’ve prepared a cheat sheet that shows you 15 success traits of a serious athlete that you can follow in one glance. So head over to starplayeracademy.com right now, and till tomorrow.

I look forward to see you become a StarPlayer.

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Photo Credit: “Tyler Johnson” – Uploaded by Dolovis. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons “Johnson4 (8443952070)” by TheAHL. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons

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