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You Get Out What You Put In

“Son, you get out what you put in,” Earl Woods, father of Tiger Woods, tells his son on the morning before he was about to win his 3rd consecutive US Amateur Championship. Only one other person before him had completed that feat; Ben Hogan. That day, Tiger was Tiger, no one better than him at that time in amateur golf, but in his own words, “no one wanted it more than I did.” He wanted to be the winner so bad that he was willing to put in the sweat and grind to get there. However, who are we to say that the person who came in second that very same day was not successful. The reality is that success has many definitions- Tiger’s definition of success was his own opinion and benchmark. It cannot be templatized as the measure of success for everyone.

You get out what you put in.

As a member of the Asian society, I have noticed that, we sometimes get lost in the quagmire of comparisons. We tend to base our definitions of happiness and success on the achievements of others. But what we forget is that each individual has a different set of talent, work ethic, luck and ability. Hence, we end up in an unfortunate situation of feeling inadequate and like “failures.”

At AddedSport, we help a lot of families find what their child’s metric of success is in their respective sport. More so, we strive for our young budding athletes to define their own meaning of success. We encourage our clients to learn the comparison of self versus self; to understand their abilities, goals and expectations better to determine their progress and use that as their measure of success.

We have found that expectation management is key. While there is aspirational guidance, and a strong support system that AddedSport provides its clients, a vital ingredient of the “magic potion” is how well we can adjust our expectations based on the hard work we put in. Yes there is talent, circumstances, ability etc. that get in the way, but to a certain degree, we need to accept that hard work delivers success.
You get out what you put in.

Kanika