Since school has started back, we have had several meetings for softball, introducing various staff, planning out our semester and just getting things in order for the year. One of those meetings was with our amazing strength coach, in our weight room, to discuss our goals for the year and to shine some light on why we do what we do for lift. My strength coach always has some metaphor or phrase to say regarding different things in the weight room, and one of those phrases really stuck with me during this meeting. He started by talking about conflicts, and asked us if we thought the word conflict was positive or negative. Naturally, we viewed it as negative. Well, that was the wrong answer.
My coach went into how we should be viewing conflicts as something that can be learned from. “Without conflict, there is no change. Without change, there is no adaptation. Without adapting, there is no getting better.” He then went on to tell us that we are constantly working to get better, so why not view conflicts as that domino effect to do so? Allow conflicts to bring change. Allow that change to help us adapt. By learning to adapt, we are then getting better.