Hi. My name is Tony. Today I will be talking about finding motivation, not giving up and my journey in cross country.
So, when I first joined cross country, I had the expectation that it would be a relaxing experience. I would be giggling with my friends while enjoying the beautiful view of the cheng mun river.
However, that was not the case. Every second of practice was hell. imagine the four stages of cancer compressed into 30 minutes, because that was how I felt, and it didn’t feel good.
Besides my terrible mindset, another thing I struggled with is that I always gave up halfway. Of the couple of races I joined that year, I ran about only half the time and walked the other half
On top of that, I was also absent very often. In that season, I only went to about 3 practices total.
As you can see, this is an accurate representation of my progress in cross country. I had an OK endurance in the beginning of the season, but because I skipped practice and didn’t give effort, it quickly went down hill
This is a picture of me in the finals. As you can see I was gleaming with confidence and even posed with an epic dab because I somehow expected myself to get top ten.
To my surprise, I got about 10th … to last place. I was completely devastated for a whole week and was quite disappointed in myself
then came 10th grade. I told myself that it would be a fresh start. This time, I would work hard every practice and be more humble
This was me in my first meet. As you can see I was mange to almost catch up to cyrus, but the stitch got to me and I really wanted to give up.
However, I saw cyrus in front of me and that kept me to push just a little harder, as I really wanted to beat him for once. At the end I was able to beat him.
Finally it was the final championship, I was quite nervous as I put a lot of time and effort this season and didn’t want it to be put to waste
I was doing quite well in the race. You can see me hear just running past some other runners.
However, my confidence slowly dwindled when I passed the halfway mark, A devilish man appeared in my mind and told me that all my practice did nothing and that I should just give up.
Then suddenly, a radiating beam of light shot at me and a voice from the heavens told me to not give up.
… Ok, that didn’t really happen, but while I was praying to God, he reminded me that the finish line is closer than I think, and that I’ve made much progress this season.
At the end, I was able to finish the race with a time and ranking I was proud of.
There were three lessons that I learned from my time in cross country. The first lesson was that I should set realistic goals so that I won’t be too devastated when I fail.
The second lesson I learnt was if you find something hard or difficult to overcome, I should set smaller goals, to give myself a sense of progress and motivate me.
THe last lesson I learned was that God can really give me strength. He may not give me biceps like these. But if you ask for God’s strength with genuinity, he will certainly give it to you.
