This week The Culture Guy family had some flipping brilliant news.
News that came at the end of long process three-year process, that sometimes didn’t seem like it was achieving anything.
This week my 18 year old daughter signed a development contract with a professional rugby 7s team. It gives her access to training, specialist coaches, and opportunities to play abroad for a professional team in some of the best tournaments in the world.
The Culture Guy clan are super proud, but we are more proud of how it happened.
It happened through consistent hard work over the last three years.
Up at 6am several times a week. Down the gym after school. Club training. Day after day, week after week, for three years. Coming home early from school parties, missing social events that all her friends went to. Making decisions to work when others played. Traveling hundreds of miles for games.
And sometimes the whole effort seemed pointless.
There were periods of time, when she saw no real improvement. She didn’t seem to be getting any better. Times when it appeared she was going backwards and getting worse.
Plateaus and troughs that really hurt.
But through it all we had a mantra. “Trust the process and Tom Brady it.
When things were at their toughest, we focussed on today only and trusted that the work we did today would eventually pay dividends. None of it was wasted, so even when it felt pointless we trusted the process.
Tom Brady tells a story of when he started out at quarterback in New England how he didn’t get much practice time to show what he could do, so he decided to take the little time he had and make it the very best it could be. No matter how little time or how few opportunities he got, he gave it 100% and made it the best it could be. And eventually he got more opportunities and made them the best they could be. And then more opportunities came his way and then he got the chance to start for the Patriots and then he was the first string quarterback and then he was 7 times Superbowl champion.
“Trust the process and Tom Brady it!”
And when an opportunity arose for my daughter to play at the Melrose Sevens – the oldest rugby sevens competition in the world – for a senior sevens team full of international players, she was ready. And though she got just 4.5 minutes playing time on the field, she made them the very best 4.5 minutes she could.
And along came other opportunites to play for senior sides in national competitions and eventually she got the call that a professional team wanted her to sign a contract to their senior academy.
Because she trusted the process, even when she didn’t want to and it seemed kind of pointless! She trusted the process when she was tired and wanted to stay under the duvet. She trusted the process in the rain and mud. She trusted the process over three years and reaped the benefits.
Now we have to implement the ‘48 hour rule’ (I’ll tell you about that one in another email) and trust the process again as we set off for a new mountain.