3. Learn Something New

I ain’t no Maria Sharapova……

This challenge was about practicing what I preach to my boys. I’m always encouraging them to try something new. To step outside their comfort zone and to focus on the process not the outcome. My husband is a very good tennis player (he and a friend completed a Guinness world record for the longest consecutive doubles a few years ago). With two other couples we entered a doubles competition known as the ‘presidents’ (players who have played competitively in their younger years). The competition was every Saturday for 6 weeks but in total the amount of days spent focused on tennis was about 19 so I’m counting it as a challenge! I tennis racketed up, took a few lessons along with some coaching from my husband. Then we started to play the competition. Well….. It is fair to say no amount of enthusiasm or fitness outweighed years of playing. I must of looked like a ‘fish out of water’. These people would hardly break a sweat and they would place the ball anywhere they wanted! The only game we won was against a doubles couple where the opposition was closer to eighty than seventy. I really was given a lesson in all things tennis. However, the silver lining was we were known as the team that was ‘super fun’ to play. So what did I learn from this challenge? I had to really live resilience and ‘bounce back’ after losing game after game. I had to define what success looked like for me? Instead of winning, I focused on little achievements in the game like returning a serve that was coming to me faster than a bullet or getting my serves in without double faulting. The ego took a battering and I just had to accept it, be vulnerable and not take myself so seriously.

Was it fun? Absolutely, am I going to play next season……… jury is out on that one!!!