Create the types of genuine connections in your relationships today that you haven’t had since your high school days.
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If you’ve ever played team sports, you probably experienced the sadness of it coming to an end. I certainly did.
Before my last high school basketball game I sat in my locker and tears ran down my face.
I had spent the last five years playing basketball with the group of guys that sat in that locker room with me.
We had worn the same uniform, traveled together, and endured 6:00 a.m. practices together, including “Flores” workouts (a workout named after a teammate of mine that was particularly prone to inspiring our coach to remind us what it felt like to push yourself so far that you vomited).
It was about to come to an end.
We weren’t particularly good. We never made the playoffs. We were just ok.
But we were undoubtedly a team. We were a group of guys that pushed ourselves and each other regularly, we laughed together, we won together, we lost together, and on that night, we cried together.
But, for the most part, we didn’t stay close after our playing days. We all moved on with life, and once we no longer shared that locker room, our ties faded.
Since then, I’ve had great friends, guys from college or elsewhere that are my closest friends today and that I have shared amazing experiences with.
But very rarely, if ever, have a felt a part of a team like I did in that locker room. If I’m honest, just writing this makes me tear up a bit for the loss of that experience.
I don’t think it should be that way.
We shouldn’t need the organized extracurricular activities of our youth to have the kind of bond a team gives you.
So how do we get it now without the free time we had when we were kids and without someone making it easy for us by setting up an extracurricular program designed for us to have that experience.
First, we have to identify what made the relationships with our teammates different than most of the other relationships we have had since (outside of the sport or activity we participated in and the uniform we wore since that is impossible to recreate in our relationships today, and so isn’t very useful).
And, then figure out how we can replicate those things in our relationships today.
What We Lost and How to Get it Back
There are two important things that made our relationships with our teammates unique and are recreateable today.
1) We were real with each other.
We may not have been real in the hallways of school, where looking cool or at least trying to limit the amount of people that realized we weren’t, was the main goal.
But in the locker room or in the gym, we were real.
When you are pushed to your limits physically, it’s hard to be anything but authentic about those limits. And that authenticity spills over into everything else.
Since leaving that locker room, I have been less than authentic most of the time. Unwilling or unable to admit to failures or imperfections. I’ve mostly done it as a protective mechanism. Protection from judgment, failure, or embarrassment.
If that is you too, you and I have essentially guaranteed we that we won’t have the type of relationships we had with our teammates again. Or we will have it with just the small circle of people that we actually let see the real us because you can’t have that kind of connection without being real with the people you are connecting with. It’s impossible.
The solution is simple, but so difficult. Be authentic. Be weak. Be flawed. Be sad. Be disappointing. But, also be inquisitive. Be giddy. Be silly. Be you.
It is still very hard for me, but there is no doubt that when I let my guard down and really let the actual me come out, the connections I make are far deeper and more akin to those that I miss so much from high school.
So give it a try. If it feels uncomfortable, that means you are doing it right. Let that be your guide, but don’t follow your gut and bail when it get’s hard. Keep going and pushing. You’ll be rewarded.
2) We served each other.
The definition of a team is essentially that it is a group of people working towards a common goal.
But that can be done a number of ways.
The one that really builds the kind of relationships that you miss two decades later is when you work towards a goal because you want that goal for your teammates, not just yourself.
A good coach instills that in his team. We had a good coach.
I didn’t really explicitly recognize it at the time, but there is no doubt that if it had just been me, I wouldn’t have run until I puked. I wouldn’t have been up at the gym at 5:45 a.m. (getting there at 6:00 a.m. for a 6:00 a.m. practice meant you were late) for practice, even when we got in after 11:00 p.m. from an away game.
All that sucked.
But I also wasn’t about to let my teammates down. And they didn’t let me down either.
We all did it and we did it for each other.
We had a couple guys play in college, but no one on a big time scholarship. It wasn’t about the next level for us. It was about each other.
After high school, I mostly lost that mentality in the rat race of college, law school, and life. I’m not saying I spend my days pulling the rugs from beneath people, but, since those days I certainly haven’t had that same sense of serving others.
The solution, again, is simple. Serve the people in your life.
It’s just a matter of being intentional. As you go through your day interacting with people, be mindful of chances to help them.
You’ll be shocked at how many times you can spend 30 seconds to a minute that helps someone, and builds a connection. You’ll also be shocked at how many times you missed those opportunities in the past because you were just thinking about whatever the next thing was you were going to do.
Start today looking at each interaction you have with people as a chance to help them in some way, and then act on those chances. Take the extra minute, really be present and listen to what they are saying.
Conclusion
Even though the days where you wore a uniform with your high school’s name on it are gone, the types of relationships you had back then don’t have to be.
Start treating your relationships with the people in your life the way you did the ones you had with your teammates.
Be real and serve them.
When you do, you will have that same feeling of connection, support, and loyalty.
And you will build a new team that will be with you for life, not just until your season is over.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
It is kind of sad that a team whether a sports teams, a workplace, military unit, etc., eventually breaks up because people died, retired, gets promoted, etc.
I agree. It’s hard to try to recreate those relationships. I’m not great at it, but being vulnerable seems to be the best way to make it happen.
It’s not what I expected …. great rad, thanks
Thanks Tom! What did you expect?