Yu Song: My Journey back as a player

Through the years of basketball, i’ve been constantly surrounded by people who is constantly saying how “old” they have became – at the age of 25 or 26 – to play basketball. How they were once much better than they were and many other interesting stories . Although I do not deny that they were once great players , I feel that what they are really saying is this , “You ought to respect me for who I was, not who I am” . – it was really an excuse .

I can back that statement up because I am one of the people who did that (as described above). I would often tell my players how good I was, how smart I was and stuff like that. As a coach, I had that “Right”. I am more senior, older , I have a job commitment , I need to start a family soon , etc. Also my current level of basketball play does reflect shades of my old self. But hey , i told myself, “your students are busy too, they have homework , they need to deal with lack of freedom etc”.

I’ve always taught my players to exercise time management, I guess its time I did the same to myself, I have to stop giving excuses , stop talking about who I was.

Instead, I should focus who I am , how can I be a living example for my players? Look , i’ve seen 60 year olds playing basketball at a remarkable standard for their age – I am 21, no excuses.

Hence began the journey for me back as a player , in fact, this insight came when I ordered the DVD from ganon baker “How to survive and thrive as an undersized” , ganon baker is 35 yrs old… and he works out like no other player I’ve ever seen. “talk about being old? whos older here” – i asked myself .

I’ve learned to stop focusing on the past.. I’ve moved on, to the present. I do not know what the future holds for me, but that’s beside the point. I want to live in the moment, for the moment.

Comparing myself to who I was before will not get me to who I was nor will it get me to who I want to become. As we journey through the sands of time, I came to understand that at every stage in our lives, we mature and grow. We’ll never be who we were, we gain some stuff along the way, we lose some stuff along the way.

Accepting what we’ve gained (experience, wisdom, maturity) and making the best use of it and accepting what we’ve lost (physical stamina , energy , drive) is the key to living one’s life. It’s never really about what we have, but more of how we use them. (note: Losing something doesn’t equate to not being able to get it back, I am just citing examples of stuff we can gain and lose – it doesn’t mean that in order to gain something, you need to lose something and vice versa)

Michael Jordan broke the record of most points scored for a 40 year old, he scored 51 points. Scoring 51 points was not something out-of-the-norm for jordan at all. But when he did that, I am sure he was always thinking about what he could do with what he had(jump shots, directing traffic, etc), not who he was(the high flying dunker).

I am glad I moved on to learn to let go of my past.. Readers, do you have a similar experience? Share it with me in the comment box. Here’s a video that illustrates what I just mentioned in the previous paragraph (last sentence)