...to Embrace (Finally!) the Power of Positive Thinking

Last week I heard Baylor University's women's basketball forward, Brooklyn Pope, talk about how they won the NCAA championship.  She sounded so self-assured, so much in command of her mental and physical resources, and yet so young. "Whenever you let negativity sink in your head, then it's possible. We never even gave it the thought [sic] of day."

Baylor University's Brooklyn Pope and Coach Kim Mulkey

Photo courtesy of Cheryl Vorhis

Hearing this collegiate champion made me wish I had been an athlete when I was a kid. Instead of training with a coach who encouraged me to think the best of myself in order to perform better, I trained with Marcia Dale Weary at the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet (CPYB).  Marcia is an internationally renowned teacher who probably produces more professional ballet dancers than any other unaffiliated ballet school in the US. She didn't get to be to internationally renown by passing out warm fuzzies every time you nailed a triple pirouette.  Marcia's training style is strict and unforgiving; the best you could hope for after a well-executed move was a slight grin and the instructions for the next combination.  Marcia pushed her dancers to work harder, to stand stronger, to jump higher, to stretch longer, to point feet better by showing them that what they had done so far was not enough. You were never thin enough; you never jumped high enough; your leg was never extended enough; the lines were never clean enough; the timing was never precise enough. As a young dancer at CPYB, you always knew that whatever you had done, it was never enough. Because I was young, naive, and thought that people only said things that were true, I believed her. So in my formative years, I grew up thinking I was just simply not good enough to do any of the things I really wanted to do, in spite of the voice deep down inside that told me that I was perfectly capable of  many things, including becoming a professional dancer.  Even though I recognized I had various talents and skills, I believed Marcia and others who focused more on my weaknesses than my strengths. This negative thinking dismantled my dreams of dancing, further eroding my faith in any of my abilities, and haunted most of my pursuits throughout my adult life.

It's taken the Italian Mama half a century to figure out what 23 year old Brooklyn Pope and presumably her teammates already know: believing you can achieve your goals turns that belief into reality. If you allow self-doubt, you have invited failure into the dream, and it just might take up permanent residence. 

With less to lose at this point in my life, the Italian Mama is old enough to shrug off the ingrained self-doubt that crippled me in my youth. At this point, I guess I just don't care that much if I don't achieve my mid-life goals. If I don't succeed, it's fine; if I do, that's great. Ironically, this nonchalance makes those goals more attainable. Certainly the more positive approach increases my chances of actually fulfilling my dreams, rather than walking into an endeavor with those nagging self-doubts that I'm just not good enough. Now that I am old enough, the Italian Mama wonders how many more dreams I might have fulfilled had I embraced the power of positive thinking when I was younger and the stakes were higher.