Until about 9th grade, I had always been scared of trying new things. It didn’t seem thrilling or fun or useful to me. But I made a couple spontaneous decisions to pick up some things that I had never done before. In ninth grade I joined the band with no musical experience then in tenth I joined the varsity softball team after never playing a similar sport. Then, soon after committing to being a Christian, I decided to be a team leader at a kids Christian camp. At that camp I met one of my best friends in the world, and after knowing each other for only a week, decided to go to the next camp in Ohio, four and a half hours away at seventeen years old. Instead of going to a college near my hometown, I decided to go to college about two and a half hours away where I would be living by myself, truly for the first time. After a semester of college, I decided it would be fun to join the track and field team with no track and field experience. Now I have come to love living my life in this spontaneous way. Now, I realize these are pretty big things but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be trying new small things either in order to better yourself. I understand committing to something big very quickly is hard. It was hard. In fact, my high school valedictorian speech talked about this exact topic about how we shouldn’t be afraid to explore the unknown. I know it sounds silly but whenever you’re eighty years old you want look back and think that you had a fulfilling life. My goal is to do that at twenty. My goal is to do that tomorrow. My softball coaches in high school urged me that I would be a good track runner but I didn’t feel it was worth it to quit the team to try something that I had never done before, so what better time than at a Division II university. I would rather try it and fail than say “I would be good at that” and never had done it. I know this is a topic that a lot of people and influencers talk about, but I do believe this truly important, so I figured it was valuable to share my experience and how I have implemented this mindset into my life. Again, it doesn’t have to be big lifestyle changes. Just yesterday, I decided it would be beneficial to me and my new track career that I should start stretching regularly so I started a stretching routine. I stretch right when I get up and I stretch about two hours after practice. I might be scared that it might not work or even if it does, maybe not as quickly as we wanted it to, but if it does, it would be beneficial. I think about the positives much of the time rather than the negatives, and that has come back to bite me a few times but I think it is better to see the good than the bad.
Sure with that I leave you with trying to take advantage of every opportunity you have. You’ve probably heard that a million times but what a lot of people don’t realize is you can make those opportunities for yourself. Try things and try not to be scared they get some more things you try the less scary it will be.
Look out for tomorrow’s blog. Peace, God bless – Alexis