Abusing potential

Words have power. Sometimes we don't realize how big. The bigger is your authority the bigger power your words have. But because we are constantly bombarded with information from the media that we are unique, special and best, the words lose their meaning and we realise they are used only for profit. 

It's different when you hear it from the teacher, public person or even a coach. It's different if we hear it about ourselves, someone close to us or our child.

"Your child has potential" - Those are my words during one of our Family classes. Soon after saying that I kept on thinking. What is potential? Potential is showing the capacity to develop into something in the future. It's just acknowledgment of the child passion to movement. And then I reminded myself the abuse of passion. Children forced into ballet dancing, playing violin and other activities by ambitious parenting. It's different when you change your potential into passion by yourself to when it is forced on you.

Never force ambitions because it will not work if you forcefully try to make yourself or others happy. Passion should be like a tree and our responsibility as coaches or parents (In the end that's the same thing) is to plant the seed and taking care of it.

Every time you see a video of an "amazing" child there's one word that is repeated constantly, "Gifted". I don't believe in people born with gifts or talents. It is the passion and work we put in that is perceived as a gift once we develop the skill. But all of that is meaningless if we don't put work into it, and the amount of work can't become distress or it will fail on one main factor - happiness. The bigger amount of work the more our 'gift' is visible to others, but in order for it to grow and fulfil us we need to add another ingredient: passion.

For example if someone has potential in logical understanding he can transform that potential into many fields like code programming, analytics, marketing etc. We need to check what clicks in the individual soul and then give them tools needed to change it into a skill. And of course at the beginning when we are young and our potential is just coming out we have a limited tool box.

I hope that today we have a lot more understanding how the psyche development is working with children. I have hope that fun and effort can work together in order to express our passion. But there's always this thought in the back of my skull, what if those words "Your child has potential" will change this child into amazing and loving athlete, dancer or artist? That's the thing I wished most when finding this potential and helping them develop the love to movement.

Unfortunately for me, my passion into sociology and human behaviour was never notice by my principals, and I came a long way fighting with other's telling me what I should do with my life. But finally I developed the tools and passion to express and give the world something more than they wanted from and for me.

#passion #gymnastic #potential #athlete #physicaleducation #coaching #parenting #gifted #workhard