Eric Idle Was Right!

When I was first diagnosed, some of the conversations centred around being a sportsman and the theme that came with it, was a level of resilience. 

That’s true and I will try to dissect why in the following paragraphs, but it isn’t unique to sports people. In fact, I have seen the trials and tribulations of trying to make a career in sport have the reverse effect on people.

The pressure, the scrutiny, the self doubt amongst other things can drive people out of sport, or worse, towards addiction. There are enough stories over the years of football players, rugby players or cricketers forming drinking habits or gambling addiction that have disastrous consequences.

On the other hand, I have seen remarkable people who aren’t professional sports people show incredible resilience. Alex Gibson who has MND and founded ‘Challenging MND’ has completed the London Marathon with the help of some friends.

Alex wanted to finish the marathon on his feet. Straining every muscle he could, mustering any signals he could send to his body, Alex completed the last few hundred meters on his feet.

An incredibly brave and inspirational demonstration of resilience. We all have the ability to show resilience and we all have to show resilience at some point in our lives. Let’s be honest. Life isn’t fair and we shouldn’t expect it to be. Expectations can be dangerous.  The goalposts are always moving in life. When you think you have it nailed, something changes.

This is where resilience stems from. The realisation and understanding that shit happens. The uncomfortable feeling of change that is being dictated to you but not by you. As much as you can’t control the outcome, you can control the outlook.

I can’t control the outcome of being diagnosed with MND. My outlook however, is my choice. This is something I learned through my Rugby career.

Sport is unique in that it offers you week to week feedback, whether you want it or not. In the end you crave that feedback because it keeps your compass pointing North. Am I working hard enough? Is my attitude helping the team? Will my performance earn me selection next week? Why did I perform poorly?

It took time to adjust to the level of scrutiny that came with professional sports. If you played on a Saturday and it didn’t go well then you had the personal disappointment to deal with, then you felt the disappointment of supporters immediately after the game. The sideways glances or shouts from the terrace.

Visiting the park with your family or shopping at the supermarket are two places you got feedback from fans. “What happened?” or “That was rubbish.” Coming at you as you throw some bread in your trolley. It works the other way too with a “well done” or “that was a brilliant”. A constant loop of feedback.

This is before you return to work on Monday and dissect the game as a team. This is the test of resilience and accountability. No hiding place, the video doesn’t lie. Can you swallow your pride and accept responsibility for your mistakes? The missed tackle that led to a try, or throwing a wayward pass to spoil the opportunity to score.

At first, I wanted to hide or find an excuse for why it wasn’t my fault. Anything to avoid the feeling of guilt or responsibility.

Eventually though, accepting responsibility and openly admitting a mistake helped me understand that accepting responsibility wasn’t a weakness at all. Of course I didn’t want to be watching my mistake on a big screen in front of the team but I had to show resilience by putting my hand up and taking ownership for the sake of the team and myself.

This was the quickest and most effective path to moving on as an individual and as a team. It built trust with your team mates and coaches to say ‘I am someone who will do the right thing for the team.’

If this happened every week then owning my mistakes would have worn thin, so more importantly I owned the mistakes AND worked hard not to make them again.

It’s a lot easier to tolerate mistakes if the person is big enough to wear them. A teammate who made mistakes and didn’t learn to accept them didn’t last very long.

This is where resilience grows from in a sporting context. The self scrutiny, the team mates, the coaches, the supporters and sometimes the media. The ability to ride the good times with the bad. To take the positive comments with the negative. Often it is only out of the negative experiences that we can build resilience.

That is something we all have in common. Many of us, if not all of us, will have had difficult moments. Not all of us will reflect on a negative experience and see how it has helped your life.

And that’s what resilience looks like outside sport too. Every one of us has faced something hard. Not everyone stops to look back and see how those moments shaped them.

MND has shaped my life. That sounds ridiculous even as I write it, I know how it sounds. I have plenty of reasons to be angry, bitter or jealous. But I choose to look at what it’s given me, because the alternative will swallow you whole.

It’s a battle. But then I think about the time I get with my wife every day. My kids every day and that’s when the picture changes.

Resilience, for me, isn’t toughness. It isn’t bravado.
It’s choosing your outlook when your outcome is out of your hands.

And that’s something every one of us is capable of.

I think Eric Idle said it better with ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’.