I have been sitting on how to share this in blog-form for a couple months now so here it goes!
Last summer I decided to hang my paddle up and dedicate 2020 to living out some of my big travel dreams. Unfortunately, things did not go to plan.
I had planned to spend this past season travelling with my backpack and indulging in cultural experiences, history, good food, and meeting new people. I did not expect to trade in my journey through Europe for a journey of self-discovery while isolated for nearly 4 months. While I would have come home from my trip full of memories, experiences, and great photos, my time at home has given me something more valuable.
During the past 4 months, I have gained an appreciation for true self care. I have gained an understanding that being busy is good, but it can also be a coping mechanism for when you don’t want to come to terms with reality. I have come to understand how my stress level and emotions have a ripple effect on the people and environment around me. And most importantly, I have gained a greater appreciation for the people I love and doing what I love, because if this pandemic has taught us nothing else, it’s that the world we comfortably live in is fragile. So, we must hold close to us what we love and who we love, and we can do this in many ways such as exercising gratitude and staying present, to name a couple.
The pivotal moment for me during my time at home was discovering how to reallocate the time I used to spend juggling too many jobs with activities that involved taking better care of myself. I learned that I was previously just skimming the surface of self-care and that there are serious benefits when you actually commit to taking great care of your mind and body. In light of trying to stay brief, I will dedicate a separate blog for some of the self-care strategies I instilled during lock down.
Along with taking better care of myself, staying close with my paddling community played a huge role in helping me staying positive and happy at home. I worked with Canoe Kayak Ontario Sprint to start an initiative to help athletes at home that included providing resources and live sessions for fitness, nutrition, wellness, sport science, and so much more. Through this process, I learned a lot about our sport and I felt a sense of purpose by helping other athletes and keeping our paddling family connected. This along with my involvement with my own canoe club reunited me with the love for paddling that I had started to lose sight of last year.
I surprised myself with a thought that I initially laughed off. What if I returned to sport? Crazy, right? Surely, I love paddling, the people, the memories… all that jazz that I have mentioned in blogs past. But I ended that chapter on good terms last year and I am so excited at the idea of starting a new one. But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t left thinking about the ‘what ifs’.
My thought process went a little something like this:
Now that I am actually learning the true value of taking care of myself (basically doing everything I was always told by professionals to do as an athlete) and I actually have the time to do it, I wonder where that would take me in sport if I was still full time training.
These unusual times of the world coming to a stop has allowed me to spend this extra time on myself but when things return back to normal it won’t be the same.
On the other hand, I just completed my university degree and I planned to pause most of my jobs to travel this year anyways. So, it is entirely possible for me to return to sport being free of school and work. It is a choice and a decision based on dedication and commitment.
If there was ever an opportunity to take a break from sport and have a summer to reintegrate with no FOMO of missed competitions, this is definitely the year.
Would I regret not taking this opportunity to return to sport to push my limits and achieve some higher goals?
What is the opportunity cost from the decision to return to sport? Plans to travel, career development, finances…
Can we still work on developing those at a slower space as a supplementary activity to sport? Yes. Will postponing any of those have a detrimental effect to my long-term goals? No.
Time to make a pros and cons list!
So, I spent a lot of time thinking this over. I came to the conclusion that there is still a hungry paddler inside of me, and the crazy times we are living in should be lesson for all of us to do what we love. I decided that if I were to return to sport, I would need to take a new approach and do a full SWOT analysis on my previous performances and habits. I wanted to identify all of the components that go into making the perfect paddler, on and off the water, and create a plan on how to execute it to the very best of my ability. And so, the work began.
After a couple months of pondering, analyzing, and discussing, which I can go into more depth in a separate blog, I drove down to my canoe club to get back in my boat under the new COVID-19 procedures. Being able to paddle this summer has been the greatest gift during these hard times. Seeing familiar happy faces at the canoe club and getting out on the water is something I can look forward to every day. It hasn’t always been easy, external factors have reminded me how fortunate we are to be able to paddle but how fragile things still are, and internal factors have shown me how much work has to be done and how patient I need to be.
So all in all, I am so excited. I am working on exercising gratitude and bringing my best self every day. And I intend to share my journey along the way – I have flipped my website that I had originally planned to share my travel stories into a platform where I can write about sport, lifestyle, and I have even created a space to share recipes from my cooking Instagram page @theathletesplate!
Thanks for reading along and as always, thanks for your support 😊
Hayley
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