During English class, a guest called Mireille.C talked about her experience of participating in an Iron Man Competition. An iron man competition is a triathlon which consists of swimming, cycling and a marathon run (In that order). I was surprised at how people could possibly swim, cycle and run without a break. Ms.Mireille talked about how she challenged herself to the competition, whilst learning to swim. Competing in such an event was astonishing to me, let alone learning to swim to compete (I have horrible stamina when it comes to sports).
She spoke of how she didn’t hate a lot of things, yet she hated swimming. She kept motivating herself to keep going, to not give up, which was the reason why she could wake up in the morning even though she dreaded practicing swimming. She had an unbelievable amount of resilience, recovering quickly and asking herself “What can I do better” to improve herself everyday. She used a lot of resources, got help from professionals and experts yet she found difficulty applying her knowledge when swimming. Every time she swam, self doubt and the want to give up overwhelmed her. She kept persisting and learnt to swim in just 8 months. I couldn’t imagine how much emotional struggle she had to deal with. I admired her strength, not only how she physically endured all the training but the battle she endured in her mind. Pushing away words like “You should give up”, “You can’t do this” or “You hate this” must’ve been extremely difficult especially because the person who was saying it was herself.
Connecting her experience with some of my own, I had and still have difficulty with persevering with math. I’m not particularly “Bad” at math and it wouldn’t be an understatement to say that it is one of my favourite subjects. I went through the test and the interviewing process to get into an activity called “SEAMC” or South East Asia Math Competition. Everyone there was ahead of me and I felt like I didn’t belong there. The only thing that was keeping me there was my desire to learn more from the people around me. I was so frustrated at times, the feeling of “I’m never going to catch up” and “I’m useless” was overwhelming. I was the tiniest fish in the pond.
Learning to swim is no easy task, doing it without help would be near impossible. Mireille.C got advice and help from professionals who coached her. When asked about whether the people around her were supportive or not, she replied with how some of her coaches probably doubted her deep down. She found it difficult to find a coach with a matching philosophy. When she asked “Where do I start?” some advised her “Do what feels right” to which she thought “Well it all feels wrong”. She didn’t appreciate kind comments which wouldn’t help improve herself so she looked for coaches who could spot her mistakes and fix it with her. I felt like I understood what she meant. When trying to improve yourself, kind comments which don’t point out what you’re doing wrong can be indirect and annoying.
I believe that she may have been frustrated at the fact that she couldn’t see herself improving, not at the fact that she wasn’t good at swimming at that instance. I asked one of my classmates with “Which of these two do you find more frustrating? Not improving in a moment, or feeling as if you’ll never improve?”, he replied with “Feeling as if you’ll never improve”. When a person works as hard as they can and perseveres for a long time and they don’t see any improvement, things start to look hopeless. I had (still do) have a similar problem with my mother. I feel as if my hard work is never enough and my mother would often say that “It is enough”. But that only made me even more frustrated. I didn’t want to be content with the knowledge and skills that I had. I wanted to keep going. But at times my hard work would only result in me crying.
When being coached she had a moment where she analysed her own swimming by watching a video. She cried in frustration as she thought that she had a long way to go. But every time she competed she would think “Gonna give it everything I have”, which was inspirational, not just for triathletes but for others who are going through hardships.
Mrs.Mireille gave advice to those who wished to challenge themselves “Be organised and forgiving” and “Step out of your comfort zone, as much as you can”. What she meant by the first line was that a person should balance their life with their goal and other things. The second line shows what people can do if they challenge themselves to something new.
Her talk about her experience taught me that no matter how difficult something is, if you work hard enough you can do it. To believe in yourself and to flip the negatives to positives (Though that is extremely difficult to do).