In Your Heart, Are You A Champion?

by Jill MacGregor

We all have hopes and dreams—goals we’re working towards—projects we’re passionate about. These things light our fire, fuel us and often times become a part of our identity.

I just want to check—when you think of yourself working on the projects you’re most passionate about, do you feel like you’re a champion? Are you giving yourself the credit you deserve for the progress you’ve made?

Do you give yourself room to win?

Because, I tell you, it has to start with you. You shoot the gun, you run the race and you call the finish. One day there’s going to be a jackass in front of you telling you that they don’t get it, they don’t like it, they don’t understand why you’re bothering or will offer you the flimsy most deficient of praises for your efforts.

(You’re picturing that person’s face, aren’t you? Yea, me too.)

Don’t let them win.

There is one person who can keep the fires burning and that person is you. It may feel exhausting sometimes but it’s good to know who’s in charge of making your dreams a reality (that’s you). No one is going to do it for you. Stop waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting. Its all you, my friend. You are the director, the lead and the stage hand. If you assign any of these roles to other people, what are you going to end up with? (asked the control freak.)

People love you, people want to see you succeed but you are the only person so closely tied to the outcome of making your dreams come true. That will never be as important to others as it will be to you—no matter how much they love you.

No one’s going to make your dream happen for you.

So let’s play a little game with my theatre analogy and see how you’re progressing. In my mind, champions play all these roles.

You, as the director

You call the shots. A good director pushes because he sees the future performance; he knows what the end product needs to look like. A good director is always looking for a way to make it better. And you’re a good director because you can read the room; you understand what people need before they do. You might think this all sounds like clever manipulation but I call it close observation, attention to what is not said just as much as to what is said. Leading the action. Stating what you want until you get it. Being appreciative when you do get it or even something better than you’d expected.

Are you doing that? Who would possibly do that for you—and if anyone is, why are you letting them? This production is yours.

You, as the stage hand

So many details keep the machine running. So many people rely on you moving invisibly behind the stage. Everything has to be in its place and hit its own mark for the production to be believable and hold the audience’s attention. But every rehearsal has prepared you for this performance—as you’ve developed the muscle memory to multi-task you way through most anything. And become agile enough to make due when something isn’t exactly in place.
You are the glue that keeps everything together.

You, as the lead

Insecure, with a definite need for constant praise, you are at your best and shiniest, when you feel the pressure may crack you. You’re quite certain that this is the one time they are all going to finally discover that you are a big fake, a giant imposter and that all previous good fortune was happenstance. Just dumb luck. Right place, right time.

But then you’re on the stage and all that insecurity drops away because you are the presence. You breathe life into all you do. Do you know why? Because all your former roles have prepared you for this moment even if deep down in the clutch of your gut your scared and unsure if you can do it. But ego and desire drove you up on this stage, that and something you can’t quite name, something like passion but even bigger, so chest out. Chin up and find your light. You know you could never stop even if you wanted to.

You are what people came to see.

That may sound like a lot of work for one person but the production is you and no one’s going to care for it with the same level of dedication as you will.

YOU.

Sure, we all need help from time to time. But it’s the moments when we’ve given our power away, when we’ve started to coast—those are the moments when we realize our dream is becoming a speck in the distance because we are moving away from it.

What makes people champions? When the taxonomy is our own, the definitions are our own why would we allow others opinions to gauge if we’ve been successful?

You could say someone is a champion when they achieve their dreams. But there’s a whole lot that goes on until you reach that moment. So I say a champion is someone who doesn’t give up, doesn’t sit back and let someone drive and stays in the game even when it feels like their passion has become its own reward.

Champions rarely look neat and clean. They often look slightly bruised, bloody and battle worn with a big smile on their face, arms raised and yelling, “Yes!”.