You know what they say “you can’t live with em, you cant live without em”. It seems most athletes I know choose to live with em if you get what I am saying. Relationships are just a part of life, and even though many others can be quick to point out the negatives I have to bring all the positives to light. Love has a way of making you grow up real quick.
Focus In
Being in love can put you on that fine line between being focused and not being focused at all. There is one reason that I have to say being in a relationship always wins. It makes you buckle down and get your mind right. When you are single the world is your playground but when you get locked down, instead of running around you put your time and energy into more productive things.
The problems come when you start putting that ONE, over all your responsibilities as an athlete. This is what makes most think that being in a relationship can be bad for athletes.
It may come easier for some to get the focus they need in all areas in their life, but if you just believe in yourself it will come. When you can sit down and look at all the different parts of your life knowing you are focused in all of them, things start to bloom.
Weather the Storms
Relationships bring nothing but ups and downs. The EASIEST thing in the world to do is to be like whatever and quit on it because there are plenty of people in the world right?
We make that a habit and all through life when things do not go our way we quit. I see this with athletes all the time they just quit from thing to thing but nothing ever works out. The easiest ways always have the smallest rewards.
Love teaches you that things are not going to go your way all the time in this thing we call life. When we can look back years later though and say I went through this and that, you appreciate it that much more. When you know that most others would have quit a long time ago but you still working at it that is a special kind of athlete and a special kind of love.
Get Your Priorities Right
This one is was like a Tornado in my life. First I went to college and had to tell my girlfriend I was busy as crap and she was mad. The she went to school in the states and all a sudden she started telling me she was busy as crap and I was mad. Then she went back to Toronto and became even busier and we both were mad. Looking back it is kind of funny but at the time it was far from funny.
Being in love really teaches you how to figure out what is REALLY important, what is KINDA important and what does not mean a damn thing. It helped me because it taught me how to really zone in when I got on that track. No matter what stresses were in my life I had to turn the world off for the 3 hours I was training.
Too many athletes lose track of their priorities when other things in life start going wrong it starts showing up in their training.
So What…
At the end of the day everyone has their own journey to happiness, but for those that have love as a Destination be positive because lots of good can come from it if you allow it to.
(Original image by Marta)
