Nik leaving me speechless

Nik leaving me speechless

 

I recently had the chance to take my son Nik to a tennis academy near Barcelona.

He was very excited and full of confidence. This is one of the leading tennis academies and Nik had not taken tennis too seriously over the last months and just made the decision to take tennis seriously again and push it.

So here we go… we are on a plane to Spain going to a totally new environment with new people, none of them he had ever met before, going to one of the most challenging peak performance environments at least in the tennis world….

And what is Nik doing..? He is totally relaxed, excited and enjoying the moment. He is so much more mature and helpful than even a year ago. He suggests that he collects the bag from the conveyor belt while I am going to the rental car desk and get the rental car. We have fun trying to find the exit from the car park… the navigation tells us one second to head North West and the next second to go South… as we would know in the middle of the night where South and North was… so we are laughing a lot…. this is been going on for probably 15 min but it feels like hours…and finally…we find the exit… we find the exit…. only to find out that it is closed for construction works… we were laughing even harder…

Many of us know and understand that decisions are shaping our lives, our destiny… but because of Nik I understood something else on a deeper level in that moment…..

Decisions on what we focus on AND what things mean also changes how we experience live…

Could we have been totally pissed off that the Navi didn’t give us proper directions or that there were road works going on at the exit … of course we could have focused on that and that it gets later and later, that Nik would not get much sleep and not be fit for the next day…

Would that have changed anything… Yes!!!! This would have changed our life experience in these moments…Instead of being being joyful and happy, we would have felt angry and worried… And it would not have changed the situation itself. The situation itself was out of our control.

So we finally found the exit where we were actually able to exit and made our way to the academy. We were enjoying the environment and Nik even asked me to stop to take a photo of Barcelona at night with all the blinking lights… It was magical and it actually reminded me a bit of Christmas…

We arrive at the academy and Nik is just in this unstoppable mindset… yes, he is a bit scared inside with all the uncertainty around him… he does not know which other tennis players he will meet, how the coaches are … and probably lots of other things…

BUT! He does it anyway! And isn’t that what being courageous means? Does it take courage to do something when you are totally comfortable in the situation? No of course not. Courage is to be scared and to do it anyway!!! Yes Nik!! You are incredibly courageous!!!

It was an emotional moment for me when I told him good bye. He said something like “ Dad, I will give my best and see what happens!”  It was such a magic moment for me when he said that and the way he said it. He was totally connected to himself. It was not something he just said intellectually. I could feel him. What a spirit and what a soul! I knew he would maximise his potential with this attitude and I have seen him playing opponents much better than him and putting himself on the line, fighting for every ball,  playing with his big heart and driving opponents nuts and earning their respect by giving every..every..thing, not 100% … 200% …being an example and showing everyone what’s possible…What it means to give everything.

I had tears in my eyes when I was back in the car driving to the hotel.  I felt so grateful for having such a wonderful son, grateful to see him becoming a men in front of my eyes and being able to experience these moments…feeling connected to him…  I felt so peaceful insight… i knew he would grow from the experience and enjoy it…I was soo grateful to his mum to shape his soul every day, putting so much energy and time into the kids…

Sure enough he had a spectacular time, gained the respect of the players that live there all year round and the coaches, he made new friends and everyone i talked to, either on the phone or in person was just lighting up when i told them that i was NIk’s dad. This 12 year old had lit up the people around him with his presence and as a result had made this academy a little bit a better place!!! What an incredible thing to do!!! What an incredible level of leadership and passion he had shown. Spectacular!!!

We had some time we before we flew back home and we talked about many things, went to a Tapas Bar and had some Ice cream, enjoyed the sun and walking around in Barcelona.

 

And then the moment came. The moment I was speechless. At some point he mentioned that he was worried about something. I don’t even remember what he was worried about. So I thought that this might be an opportunity to explain to him that the emotion of worry does not really serve him in a good way, because you can’t really do, be or create much in that state.

So I asked him: “ Nik to do you think worry is really helping you in that situation?”

And his answer blew me away…..!!!

He said: “ yes, because it tells you to change something and you can make things better by changing what needs to be changed…”

And i thought WOW!! Isn’t that so TRUE!!!

The emotions of worry is there to tell us something, it tells us to get prepared to deal with something or to avoid the negative consequences of something that’s coming up, that’s about to happen.

And that’s a valuable message, isn’t it? And most of us don’t take the message. What we do is either to deny the fear or even worse we surrender to the emotion and get caught up in the emotion and we get more and more worried or scared and we amplify and focus on the worse that can happen rather than asking ourselves: “ What do I need to do to be prepared, to avoid the negative consequences and make this work?”

For instance someone might be scared to or worried to get high marks in an exam. That’s probably a useful fear. It’s saying you better sit down and study and learn for this exam to be prepared. So with these emotions of fear, which are worry, being scared or anxiety it’s important to hear the message.

On the other hand there is a limit on how much you can prepare, there is a limit to it and there is a point where we just have to have some faith. At that point we may have just to say that we have to change our perception of the situation and decide that to be confident, to say to ourselves, I am prepared by my procedures, i know what to do and how to do it and i got  to stop focusing on the worse possible scenario.

I just need to become confident now and focus on it working instead of it not working.

Nik was totally conscious of that process. I have no clue where he got it from, but i have the feeling that his mum must have taught him that. She is very much emotionally intelligent.

Nik not just knows that, he is also living by it. He is doing that and that’s just spectacular!!!!!

Nik! Thank you for creating such a SPECTACULAR moment in life!!

YOU ARE SPECTACULAR!