A quick disclaimer: This column will include an abundance of various literary quotes (I am a literature geek at heart), so please bear with me on the frequent allusions to authors far greater than myself. Also, the plan for the column is to address various topics each week (motivation, adversity, individual improvement, leadership and so on), and include personal accounts involving each topic rather than just share chronological stories of my soccer experiences.
With those pleasantries addressed, let’s begin.
The Past as Prologue
To quote a line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, “What’s past is prologue.” It is with these wise words that I begin this column. A prologue is used in literature to provide readers with what the author believes is important and necessary background information related to the ensuing story. This information is supposed to help readers grasp and relate to the story and serves to aid their overall understanding of the story’s content. In this column, I’m going to heed Shakespeare’s words and use a little bit of my past as a preface to my own present journey and story.
I’m currently in Sweden, beginning what I hope will be a long and inspiring professional soccer career. While I intend to take you “on the road” with me as I navigate my dreams, I want to give you some background information on how I found myself here in the first place.
When I was 19 years old, I suddenly found myself homeless.
I had just arrived home in Boca Raton, Florida, from my sophomore year at Fairfield University, and after spending one night in the house I had called home for more than a decade, I was awakened at 8 a.m. to a county sheriff telling me and my parents that we had 30 minutes to get our things together and get out. I remember looking at the locksmith (already halfway done changing the locks on our front door) and then looking at the defeated looks on my parents’ faces and realizing that everything was about to change. This realization was admittedly shocking at first, but I oddly felt myself become almost immediately accepting of the instability that was about to take over my family’s life. For whatever reason, I wasn’t upset, I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t nostalgic. I could just sense and fell that it was a profound moment of maturation and growth and it was one of those moments you just knew while it was happening that it was going to be a significant turning point in your life. Feeling it then, and looking back on it now, the recognition is the same: my life was never going to be the same again.
With that realization, I walked upstairs, grabbed my two already-packed bags from my bedroom and calmly walked out of the front door of my house for the last time.
Among the contents of one of those bags was a book that changed my life. The spring semester of my sophomore year was a time during which so many things in my life fell apart. Within a six-week period, one of my best friends and former roommate at Fairfield committed suicide, I lost a former teammate and friend from home to a car accident and I had to cope with the loss of my grandfather. It was a tough and confusing time for me, and I was in desperate need of some support and guidance to help me through it all. I found that support in my Fairfield University soccer teammates and coaches, and I found that guidance in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
How did I get through that summer while working three jobs, having no money and living in a single hotel room with my parents? Not by any impressive coping method or talent or skill of my own. I did it by simply realizing that when you get everything taken away — home, sense of personal security, material possessions, loved ones, sources of stability, conditioned “way of life” — you need to tap into your most undervalued survival technique to help you find yourself again. That is done by recognizing, appreciating and utilizing what you do have, which is yourself and your conscious ability and unique freedom to adapt, change and fight your way out of the darkness. It’s this realization which, reinforced by the words of Frankl that I read more than a dozen times that summer, helped me understand this important lesson:
“Everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Go Your Own Way
My “own way” was soccer. And my attitude was relentlessly positive. Somehow the sport that was the hobby I was lucky enough to play at the Division 1 collegiate level turned into the game I couldn’t imagine my life without. My reason for pushing through every day that summer was the fact that I knew that the summer would eventually end, and I would be reunited with my teammates at Fairfield; all I knew was that I couldn’t let them down. I dealt with my circumstances, my financial instability, the long days, the sleepless nights, the pressure to help make ends meet and the constant frustration over how difficult my family’s life had become by finding my own way out through the game I was passionate about and for the people I felt I owed everything to: my coaches and teammates back at Fairfield.
Although every day brought challenges and uncertainty, every day I felt myself being pulled by a desire to be as prepared as I could be for the upcoming collegiate season. I didn’t want anyone to know what I had been through — most people endure and overcome much more than I had anyway. I just somehow found myself wanting and needing to be someone that could inspire and lead, and I wanted to give everything I could back to the people and the program that saved my life. I wanted to prove anything was possible. Limits don’t exist. Expectations can only be self-defined and self-fulfilled, and that hard work, perseverance and the relentless pursuit of your goals can and will always pay off in the end. I fought my darkness with a motivation to bring light to others. I vowed I would find a way to make a difference. I guess that’s when my true inward journey started.
My “Why”
Everyone finds motivation in different places and at different times in their lives. People can be moved by the words of loved ones, the lyrics of a song, the actions of those around them, the powerful messages embedded in various multimedia mediums, and by the quiet, determined voice within themselves.
If I tried to water it down for the sake of definition, I think motivation can be simply explained as the subjective psychological process that aids us in our journey to achieve our goals and aspirations. Beyond that, I think its origins and triggers vary among individuals, but I believe that the deepest type of motivation an individual or a group can experience is the kind that will pull them toward achieving success or fulfillment of potential while subsequently establishing a consistent reason for why they have set their goals in the first place. Yes, you can be pushed, energized and spurred to action by motivation. But is much more powerful to be pulled by it.
To truly understand what consistently motivates you in your life, to understand what you’re pulled by and passionate about, you have to look inside yourself and understand who you are as a person and what you truly value in your life. As Frankl further states, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
My “why” to live and to continue to play and coach the game of soccer to the best of my ability has become easily encapsulated by these three goals:
- I want to completely fulfill my athletic potential.
- I want to help change people’s mindsets about what they believe is possible for themselves, for other people and for the game itself.
- And ultimately, I want to inspire others.
I think the biggest purpose in my life is to experience, learn, grow and ultimately share with and help others.
What’s my ultimate motivation? The relentless “why” within me that I can’t ignore? It’s really quite simple: At the end of every day, I want to know I’ve made a positive, lasting and meaningful impact.
I want to end on this simple lesson I hope will inspire you today:
[dropcap]E[/dropcap]veryone has a story. This is just the beginning of mine. Thanks for reading and I look forward to discussing my arrival in Sweden and the start of my professional soccer career!Don’t let unfortunate circumstances or tragic events or missed opportunities discourage you or negatively alter your motivation. In fact, let your experiences and circumstances serve as fuel for your journey. After all, events and situations are only as meaningful (positively and negatively) as you decide them to be. Find your “why,” figure out your “how” and invest deeply in your passions and allow them to pull you toward the fulfillment of your goals and dreams.
Breathe. Battle. Believe.
L. Reilly