“The strongest type of empowerment comes from within you. Only YOU can make the choice to be better than you were yesterday”

-Brittany Berezowski-

Well that is a bunch of words!!! What does that even mean? Let’s break it down! Let’s start with the word “empowerment”. One of the dictionary’s definitions of empowerment is: To give power to

Well that sounds pretty good so far. In other words, the strongest thing “that gives you power” comes from within you! Really? How could it come from me?

Let’s look at the rest of the quote and then we will come back to that because the next part may just answer those questions.“Only YOU can make the choice to be better than you were yesterday”.

It is saying that only you can make decisions for yourself. Your coach can tell you 1000 times to change something, but unless you see value in what is being said, you probably will not be very excited to change it.

For example: If I told one of my athletes that she had to have straight legs in order to get a higher score but she did not see the importance of it, she would probably not make any huge progress. NOW If that same athlete competed in a competition and scored lower than she expected and the athlete ahead of her had straighter legs, she would probably start to see the value in what I was saying.

Why does she see the importance now and not before?

The trick is to go through an experience where you get to see for yourself the importance of what you were being told. She did not believe me before but when she did not perform as well as she thought she was able to, her opinion changed. When she noticed that there were other athletes doing what I asked that scored higher than her, she began to see the importance of my advice.

As humans we learn better by going through experiences and learning from them. That doesn’t mean that you should disregard what your coaches are telling you just so you can experience it yourself, it just means that it is very hard to change things when we cannot see what is important about it.

I encourage you to focus on what your coach is telling you a little harder this week. For every piece of advice they give, try and come up with reasons as to why it would be an important to listen to. Once you have come up with a few reasons, it will be easier for you to understand the value. Trust your coaches. They had their time in the sport and are now giving away advice to you so that you can be a better athlete. Sometimes it is hard, and sometimes it hurts but we have to trust that the results in the end will be so much more rewarding than the work it took to get there!

You are STRONG! That is why you are a competitive athlete!

-You are your own most powerful motivator and critic. Whigh will you be?- Coach Brittany