Potential

I took my daughter to swimming when she was only two years old, which was mostly driven by the thought that swimming will give her a stronger lung – since she was suffering asthma at that time.

Fast forward 11 years, her asthma has long gone, but she has kept on swimming and been competing on a regular basis. She has, however, always been in the middle of the “pack”, never shown a special talent in swimming.

I, nevertheless, find all opportunities to encourage her to learn from this sport. I have kept saying to her that she has more potential than she realized.

For my daughter, she swims best in freestyle among all the strokes. In a recent swim meet, she was placed as the anchor (last swimmer) in a 200 yard freestyle relay. My daughter, when in a team environment, somehow can be motivated to perform absolutely the best of herself. She swam like 27 seconds or something during her leg and helped her team won the first place (video below).

Her seed time (personal record) for her 50 year freestyle is 29.10 seconds. After the meet, when her excitement came down a little, I asked her “how come you swam almost 2 seconds faster in a relay than when you swam alone?

I gave her the answer without waiting, “all the years that I was telling you that you have the potential to do better than you think you could; the 2 seconds is your potential.”

Have you found your “2 seconds”?