Find Someone to Emulate
I never wanted to fall off beam five times in a meet ever again. I didn’t like it, and I knew I had to do something inside of myself to change it.
I established my goal to be comfortable and confident on beam in a meet like I was in practice. Now that I had my goal, how was I going to achieve it?
I had been good friends for as long as I could remember with another level 10 gymnast who went to another gym. She had been an elite athlete when she was younger, but as she got older, injuries happened, and she decided to compete level 10. What struck me about her was that she walked on beam like it was the floor. She did her series like she was on a line on the floor. It looked like she was so stress-free and nonchalant. I decided that I wanted to be like her. I wanted to approach beam just like her.
So what did I do? I faked it.
I visualized her doing her series on beam, with nary a care, and I challenged myself to do the same. At least, I made myself look like I was doing it. Inside, I was a wreck.
You see, even though I was quite confident on beam, I was still scared of my series. But my goal was to act like her. My goal was to not let beam get to me in a meet. So I had to practice. Enter “fake it till you make it.”
I would stand up on the beam, do a back handspring, take three steps backwards, and then I’d walk up and go. I would then go for every series in my beam workout like it was nothing. It was difficult at first for me to do it, but as I continued to visualize her doing it, I began to believe that I could do it too. (One of my mantras in life is of someone else can do it, so can I.)
It was difficult when I first began this process, but as time went on, and I pictured her, I wanted to be like her and act like I didn’t care that I was scared. It’s not that I stopped being scared, but what happened was that being scared wasn’t the most important thing to me anymore. It was more important that I went up there and performed my series like my friend, so the fear was just in the background, and not the the thing.
So, if you want to change something about yourself, or if you want to achieve a goal that someone else has achieved, then emulate that person. Be a copycat. I never knew what was going on in her head; maybe she was scared too. Who knows? But that didn’t matter. What I wanted was to approach beam the way she did. So I visualized her, then I emulated it.
And it worked.
So what was my next step? I’ll tell you tomorrow.
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