Reaching your potential

In today’s pressured world, many teens are afraid of failing, and even succeeding. They don’t want to stand out, either for better or for worse. They want to be accepted and just ‘fit in’. This kind of mindset will get you nowhere other than the road to mediocrity, and that’s nothing to be proud of or happy about. As Douglas Malloch well wrote:

If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail

If you can’t be the sun, be a star;

It is not by size that you win or fail

Be the best of who you are!

Each of us has different talents and abilities, so don’t get me wrong, it’s not about being the best, it’s about being the best at what YOU can become personally. Hockey great Wayne Gretzky has said “You miss 100% of the shots you miss.” Think about it. If you don’t try, you have a 0% chance of success! But if you put all your heart into something and work hard, you can and will succeed in whatever you want. And if it turns out that the best of you wasn’t good enough, then at least you tried, and you won’t regret or marvel at ‘what could have been’. The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them, towards the impossible.

With that in mind, let me share with you what basketball legend Michael Jordan said:

“I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. 26 times I have been entrusted to make the game winning shot … and I have missed. And I have missed over and over and over again in my life. And that’s why … I do it. “

So from one teenager to another: I encourage you to do today what others will not do, to have tomorrow what others will never have … And never be afraid of failing!