This is an article covering something every kicker should hear. I’m doing this to give you an inside look at some things that I’ve come to realize over the past few months and just years of life experience. Granted, I’m not one to give end-all, be-all advice, but these are just the things that I’ve paid attention to and noticed in my own life, and I think it’d go a long way if it helps someone else out there.
I think the way the world is shaped nowadays is very soft. The way social media is made and the way you’re thinking everything has to be is almost the opposite of the way it needs to be.
What I mean by that is as all of us are portraying our image on social media as our actual personality, but the things that we post on social media are just things that we’ve done as a result of our personality. It shouldn’t be, “Hey, let me look cool on social media and post this video of me going to all these parties or going and kicking these massive field goals – the one that I made out of the 50 that I tried.” That’s giving, not only yourself but your friends and coaches, a false perception of who you actually are.
Every Kicker and Your Social Media Image
Let’s say you’re posting videos of you having all this fun, going to all these places and parties, and you’re always out and about, living life on your social media. Then, you hang out with people you were supposed to meet a long time ago or finally came in contact with, and they saw you as this person they thought you were like, but you end up as a completely different person who is not even close to how they perceive you online.
What I’m trying to get out there is just be careful about what you put online because your online posts are a reflection of who you’re trying to be or who you think you want to be. You can post whatever you want, but just be careful.
Because in five years, you’re more than likely going to look back on those pictures and those aren’t gonna matter to you anymore. The ones that will matter are the times that you spent with your friends and family in a positive environment that was productive to your future.
I’m not saying that I’m a great example of who to look at, but I try to post, on my personal page, things that are big moments in my life. I’m married. I have a kid, a newborn. I post big moments in my life that are meaningful to me. Because I want to go back and have a journal of things that were really cool to experience so that I can remember “Oh yeah. That was a really fun moment.”
You can go to parties and stuff, but just be careful about posting that for other people to see because you may give off the impression that that’s who you actually are. But when they meet you, you’re not that same person. Hopefully that makes sense.
How is your environment?
The other token that I wanted to really go on a tangent on is to be really aware of who you’re surrounding yourself with because you are the five people that you spend the most time with. If you’re spending your time with really bad people, you’re not gonna get a great result. You’re gonna have a lot of bad things happen to you.
So, if you surround yourself with people who are constantly chasing their dreams and are trying to seek better things, you’re gonna get better results. You’re just gonna have a better life because you’re surrounding yourself with the right people.
That’s something I didn’t realize until recently, and I had to take a mental check of who I’m surrounding myself with and how I can surround myself with more people that are positive. Sure enough, my results have become more positive, and I’m living a happier life.
I used to hang out with plenty of people, plenty of friends, and as the years went on, I started to pay attention to who was actually important in my life and who was just wasting my time.
God puts everyone in your life for a reason. Everyone in your life serves a purpose, and a lot of times, their purpose is served and you are now on to the next chapter of your life with new people.
There was a time and a place for that person to be in your life, but it then becomes a situation where that person is no longer needed in your life. It’s no harm, no foul. Hopefully, they can understand that you have moved on to a different chapter where they won’t be in it.
It’s not to be shameful to them or put them in a bad place, but you have goals and dreams and desires that you have to chase, and they have to understand that. If they don’t, that’s perfectly fine, but they can’t drag you down and hold you back from being the person that you are supposed to be.
That goes directly in tune with “No one is coming to save you.” Many people, myself included, wake up with the thought of “Okay. I’m just gonna do enough to get noticed by this one person and they’re gonna come help me get to the next place.” It doesn’t really work like that.
What do your habits look like?
You have to take responsibility for your own actions. Your success is your responsibility. If you grab the reins of your life – actually take control and go where you need to go, put in the effort, do your workouts, bust your ass at your job, study film, eat right, journal, meditate – these are all things that make you the person that you’re supposed to be. You get the results of what you repeatedly do. So what are you doing to get you closer to the results you want?
Some people strive more on eating right than they do on working out. Some people don’t really like to workout, and that’s fine. Just do something to get your heart rate up. You don’t have to meditate; you don’t have to journal.
But you have to do the boring stuff to get to that place that you want to be because it’s not like you can wake up and say “Okay. I’m ready to become successful.” It’s not just gonna fall down on your lap and just be there. It is your responsibility to make it happen.
It’s not your fault, but it’s something that a lot of you guys don’t have experience of. You’re most likely given a lot of things for many years, and then you get halfway through college and realize, “Dang, I’m on my own right now,” and it becomes more present after college.
Some of you guys are watching this before college, some of you are watching this during, some of you are watching this after. There isn’t anyone, in particular, I’m directing this at. It’s just a general thesis. No one is coming to save you. Do it yourself.
That’s a saying you hear a lot, too. If you want it done right, do it yourself. It’s so true.
Every kicker needs to Take Responsibility
Take responsibility for whatever you wanna do in your life. Figure out what you wanna do a year from now. See what it would take on a monthly basis to get you closer to that goal. Break it down into a week and then a day.
Let’s say I wanted to read 60 books in a year. You read 60 books a year, divided by 12 months; it’s 5 books a month. You divide that by 4 and get 1.25 books per week.
If you really wanted to up the ante, you would do 2 books a week. 2 books a week, times 4 weeks, times 12 months, equates to 96 books over the course of an entire year. So, instead of doing 1.25 books a week, you go to 2. 96 books a year – can you imagine what that would do for you and your future? There’s books on every single topic. Like The Art Of Kicking where I pile every single topic I’ve learned and put it in one place. Not to mention other pros around the world sharing their experiences as well. Any topic you’d ever want to learn, there’s a book out there for that.
What I’m saying is just reverse-engineer your goal. Take your goal and break it down into very small achievable goals, and just go for that.
A lot of people are gonna say that you should strive for the biggest possible goal you can ever think of and multiply that by a hundred. I’m not saying that’s a bad idea. Personally, I just love the feeling of accomplishing my goal for the week. Then, I do it again for another week, and so on.
It gets hard after 2 months if you’re still not close to your big, audacious goal that you said you were gonna accomplish in a year. It can get pretty annoying when you get to the point where you’re, “Damn. I’m still not even halfway there.
But whenever you’re doing a weekly goal, and you have a two-book a week goal, and you’re doing three books a week, you’re like “Okay. I’m doing 50% better than my actual goal,” which means that I’ll be way farther ahead in a year’s time.
Putting it all together
Now, rant over. Ultimately, choose who your friends are, do it yourself, and pay attention to what you post on social media.
I hope that this gave some value to you. If it did, Comment what your favorite part was, if anything stuck out to you.
Lastly, check out the links below. The Art of Kicking Ebook. That’s gonna cover techniques, mindsets, nutritional material, analyses of what professional kickers and punters have done to become successful, and many other things.
Kicking is more mental than technical. So, a lot of the stuff we talk about is mental stuff, but there’s plenty of technical advice and drills in there as well. So, if there is one book that you could read that would make you the best kicker that you could possibly be, this would be the book for you.
Hopefully, you guys enjoy it. Leave me a review if you get it, and what you liked about it!
Until next time. Talk to you soon.