The Slump
April 1, 2018 Uncategorized 3 comments msheehy18
There are challenges throughout all lives. It doesn’t matter who you are, you have faced a challenge. Challenges are something in life that might just seem impossible. They come in all kinds of different styles. There are different sizes of challenges, trivial or enormous. There are different reasons for challenges, social or mental. Everyone has only experienced a handful of the thousands of challenges in the world. Laughter is something that helps most through challenges and problems. It is laughter that is the cure to stress and depressing situations, helping you to not have to worry about challeneges. My challenge might seem minor to most, yet it made me quite emotional, causing my inability to laugh when maybe it would have helped me through this minor challenge.
Field hockey has been integrated throughout my life in so many ways. I began playing since the third grade and haven’t hung up the stick yet. I have finished playing in high school, but this factor has not stopped me from playing. I also play on a team based out of Portland year round. I have learned many life skills through field hockey. I have always accomplished multiple things too. One example would be going on to play in college. Another one is how I was the top scorer on my team last year, my junior year, with around twenty goals. This has been a goal of mine ever since I was the top scorer my eighth grade year. I never thought I would accomplish the goal again. Continuing on to my senior year, I become one of the four captains of the team, another accomplishment of mine. Although, about halfway through my season a challenge had developed that I never thought would happen to me.
Halfway through my senior year of field hockey I ran into a challenge I thought I would never have, I couldn’t score anymore. I would push myself so hard at practices that I would cry afterward because I thought something was wrong with me. My coach and teammates knew something was going on with me, but no one knew exactly what. Outside of my non-scoring slump I would laugh with the team and laugh at my mistakes like it was the most funny thing in the world. Then during my slump, I would get angry at myself during practices. My inability to laugh at my mistakes made me overthink my problem and it kept growing larger as the season continued. I would go to the field on weekends to shoot balls for a few hours. I would stay late after practices to shoot balls. Even after putting all this work in nothing seemed to be helping me.
I had finally broken my slump at one of our home games after a few weeks of replacing laughter with crying. I went into that game thinking about my slump and how much I just wanted to get out of it. I was drowning in this challenge and it was time to escape it. When I finally scored again I wasn’t thinking at all. It was just an instinct for me to reach out and tip the ball into the side of the goal cage as you came flying towards me, just like I had used to do. After that goal, I scored another three times during that game. It was the greatest feeling to be able to score again, knowing I had finally broke the slump and breaking out of my challenge on top.
After breaking through that challenge I released my inability to laugh at my challenge was what made the challenge harder to overcome. If you don’t overthink everything and just follow your instinct and your heart then you will overcome your challenge in no time. Always be sure the laugh and never overthink situations.
3 Comments
I can relate to this because I have had minor challenges in life to were I cant find the ability to laugh my way through! And though it may seem hard to get through the minor challenge, once you do there is laughter on the other side! But what if you cant laugh your way through a problem, how do you cope with it?
I can relate to this because there have been times where I struggled to do some things that I can easily do now. But the best thing you can do about it is to take it seriously enough to work through it like you did, and then laugh it off afterwards because that’s better than getting angry about it and because of the fact that you got over it!
This is relateable because there have been times where I struggled to do some things that I can easily do now. But the best thing you can do about it is to take it seriously enough to work through it like you did, and then laugh it off afterwards because that’s better than getting angry about it and because of the fact that you got over it!