There’s a restaurant attached to my apartment building that’s hard to resist. I decide to grab some lunch and take my computer with me. I arrive and pull out my laptop.
A friend sits nearby.
He knows I’m struggling to make more money and solve my financial issues.
“You’re problem is you’re inside your own head,” he says.
“You think?” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “It’s happened to me. I’ve been there and I recognize it.”
I think about his comment. Normally, we joke together. We rarely speak about serious topics. I think this makes me consider his words more carefully.
I respect him.
He’s a lawyer, a political speechwriter, and business owner.
I know he’s right.
I’ve written down a word a few days earlier. I typed it into my phone at night when I couldn’t sleep. It’s a single word that I plan to write about…doubt.
And what does it mean to get inside your head?
You’re overthinking.
What can overthinking lead to? It can cause you to question yourself, your situation, and your abilities. In the process of overanalyzing your problems, you can become filled with doubt.
My son was a star lacrosse player.
He wasn’t good, he was one of the best.
His natural athletic ability was evident from a young age. He could make a full regulation basketball hoop when he was 3 years old. People would ask us how we taught him to do it.
We didn’t.
His talent wasn’t limited to only one sport. It didn’t matter whether it was basketball, soccer, baseball, or lacrosse, he was the highest scorer. But lacrosse became his greatest passion.
He routinely scored three to eight goals per game.
He played on a well-know club lacrosse team and was also one of the top two lacrosse players in D.C. and Virginia. He is naturally left-handed but played right or left attack and was fast enough to play middie too.
His dream was to play at one of two D1 schools.
But he got inside his head.
It didn’t happen during his regular high school games or the average club games. It only happened when he was playing club and college coaches were on the sidelines.
He had a reputation for being one of the best.
The coaches were there to watch him.
His dream was so important to him he couldn’t get out of his own way. He was a competitive athlete but he was a team player. He didn’t have the instinct to fight for himself.
He wasn’t good because he was aggressive.
He was good because he cared so much.
Unfortunately, it became a runaway train. Once you get inside your head, it’s difficult to get out of it. Especially, when you’re young. And there was one thing that compounded his age.
The had changed the rules and begun recruiting younger players. If the old rules had applied, I think as a junior or senior he would have been less intimidated.
Usually, there’s something that prompts us getting inside our heads.
For him, it was a coach he had right before recruiting begun.
Suffice it to say, after a certain age, it’s best that parents can’t coach a team with their own child on it. It can become a conflict of interest if they have a desire to see their child be the best.
The coach was sitting my son out of half the game.
It had never happened to him before.
One day we were sitting on the sidelines and I heard a father yell, “Why aren’t you putting him in? He’s the highest scorer in his age group.”
I looked at my husband and asked, “Is he the highest scorer?”
My husband had to think about it for a moment.
“Yes,” he said. “I think he is.”
It sounds crazy that in seventh grade we didn’t realize his complete stats. But there was a reason for this. I told my husband early on that I had a concern.
We were raising three boys.
Sports are important to boys.
I didn’t want our children to compare themselves to one another. They were all great athletes, but our middle son did have that undeniable passion combined with a natural pre-disposition for it.
I wanted our boys to be best friends.
I worried about an imbalance if we focused on his talents too much.
So we didn’t.
We let all of our boys be who they were. We didn’t think we needed to go overboard acknowledging one specific thing or talent. It wasn’t until recruiting began that we focused on the particulars.
At first, being sidelined frustrated my son.
Eventually, he started to doubt himself.
It was a delicate situation because we knew the coach. When I saw my son’s confidence begin to fade, I urged my husband not put him back on that team.
He didn’t listen me.
I spoke to my son. I counseled my son. I empathized with my son. I begged him not to allow one person to impact his passion and his dream. But I was talking to a child who cared too much.
I was talking to a child who didn’t have self-protective instincts.
I was talking to a child who was passionate, not aggressive.
One coach was enough to place a very powerful word in his mind.
Doubt.
Every other person, both coaches and people alike, called my son a star. But once my son got inside his head, he could no longer see himself for who he truly is.
There’s an absurdity to it, isn’t there?
That we allow one individual this type of power.
Who placed the doubt in my mind?
My ex-husband.
I’m a motivated, confident, problem-solver. I was raised by a single mother and have worked since I was 14 years old. Yet an overly long and extremely financially abusive divorce left me feeling powerless.
Every time I solved a problem, my husband created a new one.
He was angry that I left him.
Ultimately, I became so worn down, I couldn’t sleep or think straight. I’m a strong woman who never doubted myself. On the contrary, I thought I could do anything and I was fueled by solving a good problem.
It energized me.
I was independent.
But I got inside my head. I began to doubt myself. I began to overthink my problems. I became overwhelmed. The girl who her husband once said, “Could make the impossible happen.”
I lost my way.
I forgot my own individual star quality.
Because we all have one unique to our own person.
My son did play D1 lacrosse. It’s a long story. It wasn’t at the school of his dreams. I begged him to believe in himself and not to commit, and to play through his senior year.
The coaches were all still watching him.
But…
During our divorce, my husband let him sign to a college without my consent.
My son was terrified he was going to lose his dream completely so he committed. I was furious. Because this wasn’t about sports.
This was about my son’s confidence.
I”m a mother.
My job wasn’t to raise an athlete. It was to raise a confident and happy child. It was to empower my son. It was to support his dream and the college’s he’d always hoped to play for.
I knew he only had four years for that dream.
My dream was to be a writer.
I had the luxury of time.
Our marriage counselor met with our children over the years. One day he said, “He’s the child most like you.”
I don’t have aggressive instincts either. I don’t have self-protective instincts. I was a natural swimmer but hated competing individually. Yet I loved soccer and softball.
There’s an absurdity to allowing one individual to get inside our heads.
To create doubt where none existed.
Whether it be a coach or an ex-husband.
Or a boss or a friend.
Or whomever it is that never deserved that space to begin with.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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