The Value of Real Relationships
Lessons with a teenager...part 1 (I know there will be more as I keep this up)
In my last blog, I talked a little bit about the journey to finding yourself and how your past helps shape and mold you. I touched on how a lot of times, the “negative” relationships, friendships and situations, often shape you more so than the positives that happen in your life. As I was writing this, I thought about a conversation I had recently with one of my athletes about friendships and the way they change throughout the course of your life. This specific kid is 17 years old. I think we can all remember what friendships were like back then. Most of us wanted to be liked, we wanted to fit in and no one wanted to do anything that made them stand out in the wrong way to be deemed “uncool”. If someone told you that you were mean or they didn’t want to be your friend anymore, it was 100% the end of the world for you.
This kid is a little different. She is very firm in her beliefs and morals. She is understanding but insanely competitive with a no BS kind of attitude when it comes to just about anything. She’s tough, but she is also one of the kindest and most compassionate kids I have coached to date. She volunteers countless hours helping younger athletes and is a true leader on and off the court, but she wasn’t always that way. When I first started coaching her, she was a little lost in what her role was. She outwardly expressed not ever having someone who believed in her before meeting me and another coach. She was never made to feel important or like she belonged anywhere. Others on the team were always put in front of her and she did what she needed to do to be a great teammate, despite feeling unseen. When I first started coaching, my staff and I saw something different in her. It wasn’t just me, it was all of us, almost instantly. Long story short, the changes that she has made not only as an athlete, but as a person have been monumental in almost two years. She is more confident, she is in healthier relationships all around and her self confidence has improved greatly.
The situation she came to me and expressed about her friends was tough. Some really long-time best friends didn’t want to be in her life anymore. As she sat there in tears telling me how confusing it all was, I sat back and thought about my own journey through life and friendships and how I was going to help guide her through this high school experience. But that was just it, it wasn’t a high school experience. This was life altering for her. This was something that most of us experience later down the road when you realize how different you are from the friends you made as kids. This wasn’t your typical obstacle you go through when you’re entering high school and your middle school friends just don’t quite stick because you play a different sport or one dyes their hair pink and that’s not “trendy”. This was real. These were people she felt would be in her life for its entirety. And I can tell you that this is the type of kid that doesn’t have meaningless friendships, she’s just not that way. Her circle is small and she believed her relationships were strong.
So the question remained — how do I best guide this kid through this life changing experience? Simple, be real with her. One of the things she said to me while telling the story was, “They said I have changed so much and they don’t like who I have become.” I stopped her and said, “Well you have.” The look on her face was straight confusion and betrayal, like I was taking the side of the other kids. I explained to her the changes I had seen. I took her back a little over a year and reminded her of the timid, confidence lacking girl I had met in August of 2018. We talked about the type of relationships she was in and the way she handled relationships when they ended. We talked about how she was devoid of a sense of purpose and belonging leading up to that point. And after I went through my laundry list of how she really had changed, her facial expressions changed. I then said to her, “This is going to be one of the toughest lessons you learn but it is better that you do it now, than later down the road. You and your friends have changed in different ways over the last three or four years and that’s okay. None of it is bad, none of it is your ‘fault’ because all of the changes you’ve made in yourself have been positive for you.” In my opinion, most people fear change and I believe that a lot of people who struggle with their own self-confidence or self-esteem, push away from strong personalities because they dislike the confrontation that normally comes with them.
Never change
The most important part of this conversation was getting across the point that she didn’t need to and shouldn’t change for anyone, ever. I asked her what the important relationships were in her life. She listed off a few people and I asked her if her relationship with them was stronger or weaker than it was prior to the shifts she had made for herself. She expressed to me that they were all stronger and they brought as much to her as she felt she was bringing to them. There it is. There is the key to any successful friendship or relationship. Feeling like you are being met halfway for the majority, if not all of the time. We talked about her changing for the friends that were pushing her away and what that would do to the relationships that she truly valued, and we both agreed that those would then suffer and she would also feel unfulfilled with who she was, again.
Having that conversation brought light to my own friendships and relationships. I have never been one with a ton of friends, I have even mentioned that in other pieces I have written. I haven’t ever felt like that filled my cup, as some say. Having three or four incredibly meaningful relationships is way more important to me than having 100 subpar ones. However, recently I feel like the friendships I have are WAY stronger but I also have fewer. I have always looked to others as the reason why, claiming that I was always the one to reach out and I just didn’t want to anymore. Not the case at all, I now believe. It was me all along. I changed, I grew up, I started valuing myself and my time in a different way. With what I do for work, I have very limited free time and spending that with people that weren’t filling my bucket at the end of the day, seemed like a waste of time to me.
What I can say is the lesson that I taught to my athlete, I taught to myself that day too. Change is inevitable, we all go through it all the time. How we handle what happens around us after we do, is a whole different ball game. We cannot control how others will take to our changes, if they will like us/want to be friends with us or want to continue on the ride with us. We can only control ourselves and really, what other reason is there to keep working on yourself, bettering who you are, than for you. Like I said in my last blog, the relationships that matter, the people that genuinely love you, care about you and want you in their lives, will stick around for all the versions and onion layers you expose. Stick with those people and you will live a much happier and healthier life along the way.
