Life Lessons Learned

As humans we unconsciously learn life lessons every day of our lives. Some of the lessons could've been taught by teachers or by parents. No matter what, there will always be certain life lessons we carry with us for the rest of our lives. Majority of the life lessons I learned happened to come from my eleven years of playing hockey. Most people would read that and think I'm crazy that hockey could possible teach me about the hardships of life and how to handle it. But I'm not as crazy as most people might think. It all started when I was seven years old and learning to skate. Since I've never ice skated prior to then, I would constantly be falling down over and over again. At a certain point I just wanted to give up because it was too hard. Instead I kept being persistent and going to my lessons and about 3 months later I was put onto a hockey team with other kids my age. Learning to skate and playing hockey have taught me that I'm going to fail but there's no shame in failing as long as you keep trying.
I had to constantly avoid getting hit or else when I did, I wouldn't be able to breathe afterwards. It wasn't until I realized that I'm much faster than those bigger kids that I started using it as an advantage. Typically my weight made me lighter and quicker on my feet so I could fly past the larger players. Since speed was my speciality and what I was good at, I kept using it all through the rest of my time playing the sport. So I learned that if what I do is better than what others can, then I'm not going to adjust the way I play to accommodate